George Burns: God

Oh, God!

God

Jerry Landers: How can you permit all the *suffering* that goes on the world?
God: Ah, how can *I* permit the suffering?
Jerry Landers: Yeah!
God: I don't permit the suffering. You do! Free will. All the choices are yours.
Jerry Landers: Choices? What choices?
God: You can love each other, cherish and nurture each other, or you can kill each other. Incidentally, "kill" is the word. It's not "waste." If I meant "waste", I would have written "Thou shalt not waste." You're doing some very funny things with words, here. You're also turning the sky into mud. I look down, I can't believe the filth. Using the rivers for toilets, poisoning My fishes. You want a miracle? *You* make a fish from scratch. You can't. You think only God can make a tree? Try coming up with a mackerel. And when the last one is gone, that'll be that. Eighty-six on the fishes, goodbye sky, so long world, over and out.

Court Clerk: Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
God: So help me Me.
Judge Baker: So help you You?
God: If it pleases the court, and even if it doesn't please the court, I'm God, Your Honor.

God: [reading a questionnaire] "Which of the world's religions is closest to the divine truth?"
[to Jerry]
God: The divine truth is not in a building or a book or a story. Put down "The heart is the temple where all truth resides."

God: Why is it so hard for you to believe? Is My physical existence any more improbable than your own? What about all that hoo-ha with the devil a while ago from that movie? Nobody had any problem believing that the devil took over and existed in a little girl. All she had to do was wet the rug, throw up some pea soup and everybody believed. The devil you could believe, but not God? I work in My own way. I don't, I don't get inside little children; they got enough to do just being themselves. Also, I'm not about to go around to every person in the world and say, "Look, it's Me, I wanna talk to you." So I picked one man. One very good man. I told him God lives. I live. He had trouble believing too, in the beginning. I understood. I'm not sure how this whole miracle business started, the idea that anything connected with Me has to be a miracle. Personally, I'm sorry that it did. Makes the distance between us even greater. But if a miracle helps you believe that I am who I say I am... I'll give you one. A good one. Let Me see? What's My most impressive miracle? Ah-ha! Pick a card!
Judge Baker: What?
God: Pick a card, any card.

God: [reading a religious quiz] "Is Jesus Christ the Son of God?"
[thinks]
God: Jesus was My son. Buddha was My son. Mohammed. Moses. You. The man who said there was no room in the inn was My Son. And so is the one who charges $11.00 for a steak.

God: The last miracle I did was the 1969 Mets. Before that, I think you have to go back to the Red Sea.

God: "Did man fall from grace in the Garden of Eden?" I'll tell you something never came out. I made Adam 17. Eve was 15, 16 tops. I figured then 16, 17 was middle age, you know. Who knew people would live so long? Trees I figured had the best chance. Now I realize that they were kids, babies. Young people can't fall from My grace. They're My best things.

God: You know, Voltaire may have had Me pegged right. He said I was a comedian playing to an audience who was afraid to laugh.

God: Eleven dollars for a steak? Who would have thought? With Me, cows were an afterthought - just to give new mothers a little rest, you know.

Jerry Landers: [God is riding with Jerry in Jerry's car] Now, see, you know a lot of things and you've been making a lot of things happen, but none of it seems...
God: God-like?
Jerry Landers: Yeah, God-like.
God: And what to you would be God-like?
Jerry Landers: Uh... change the weather.
God: Ah, special effects, huh? What would you like? A little earthquake? A small hurricane?
Jerry Landers: No, no. I wouldn't want anybody hurt. I was just thinking maybe, uh... What about a little rain?
God: A little rain?
Jerry Landers: Yeah, a small shower.
God: One small shower. You got it.
[rain begins falling]
Jerry Landers: Hey! Hey, it's rainin'! You made it rain! You didn't even bat an eye! You didn't have to lift a finger!
God: Rain's not that hard.
Jerry Landers: It's unbelievable!
God: Would you like it to rain a little harder?
Jerry Landers: No, no. This is fine.
God: How about bigger drops?
Jerry Landers: No! This is fine! Fine!
God: Would you care for a little snow?
Jerry Landers: I don't believe it. Hey! Hey! It's not raining outside. It's just in here!
God: Why should I spoil everybody's day?
Jerry Landers: This is fantastic!
God: Thank you.
Jerry Landers: It's just like Noah's Ark!
God: Same thing. Without the smell.

Jerry Landers: But when you said... when you said everything would work out, uh, I thought you could tell the future.
God: Absolutely, I could tell the future, the minute it becomes the past. I said, everything could work out, if that's everybody's choice. People have to decide on their own what's to be done with the world. I can't make a personal decision for everybody.
God: [Jerry looks a little downcast] Why the face? So far, so good. We hit the papers, a little TV, we're in business.
Jerry Landers: You know, I'm liable to lose my job.
God: Lose a job, save a world. Not a bad deal.

God: I know how hard it is in these times to have faith. But maybe if you could have the faith to start with, maybe the times would change. You could change them. Think about it. Try. And try not to hurt each other. There's been enough of that. It really gets in the way. I'm a God of very few words and Jerry's already given you Mine. However hopeless, helpless, mixed up and scary it all gets, it can work. If you find it hard to believe in Me, maybe it would help you to know that I believe in you.

God: The reason I put everyone here naked... I wasn't trying to be cute. It's just that with clothes there's right away pockets, and pockets, you gotta put something in 'em.

God: I'm tired of all the talk that I may be dead or that I never was at all. Or, that God was just particles of cosmos, gas. I'm not gas. I found that very insulting.

God: Sometimes when you don't feel normal, doing a normal thing makes you feel normal. Here... start shaving.