Who really said it

I am much less interested in what is called God's word than in God's deeds

Q: Did Thomas Edison say "I am much less interested in what is called God's word than in God's deeds"?

No. The documented source is not Edison but the naturalist John Burroughs, in his posthumously published correspondence "Religious Contrasts: Letters of a Pantheist and a Churchman," in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 128, No. 4 (October 1921), p. 520 — where Wikiquote lists it among lines misattributed to Edison. Burroughs and Edison were camping companions, which likely explains how the pantheist's words drifted onto the more famous inventor.

Not Thomas Edison — actually John Burroughs John Burroughs 1837–1921 · American naturalist & nature essayist

Disputed Free to reuse

The documented source is not Edison but the naturalist John Burroughs, in his posthumously published correspondence “Religious Contrasts: Letters of a Pantheist and a Churchman,” in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 128, No. 4 (October 1921), p. 520 — where Wikiquote lists it among lines misattributed to Edison. Burroughs and Edison were camping companions, which likely explains how the pantheist’s words drifted onto the more famous inventor.

Last verified 10 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“I am much less interested in what is called God's word than in God's deeds” John Burroughs, "Religious Contrasts: Letters of a Pantheist and a Churchman," The Atlantic Monthly (October 1921), p. 520 — frequently misattributed to Thomas Edison.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Thomas Edison. Use the credit shown above instead.

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Provenance

The documented source

Author: John Burroughs (1837–1921)
Work: Religious Contrasts: Letters of a Pantheist and a Churchman
Published: The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 128, No. 4 (October 1921), p. 520
Popularly (mis)credited to: Thomas Edison

I am much less interested in what is called God’s word than in God’s deeds. All bibles are man-made.

The two sentences travel together; the second, “All bibles are man-made,” is likewise carried by Wikiquote in the same misattributed entry.

The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 128 (July–December 1921) at HathiTrust

How we traced it

Wikiquote’s Thomas Edison page places this line in its Misattributed section, not among his sourced quotations.
It credits the wording to John Burroughs, in “Religious Contrasts: Letters of a Pantheist and a Churchman,” The Atlantic Monthly (October 1921), p. 520 — a citation independently repeated by quote aggregators that flag it “Misattributed.”
That October 1921 volume of the magazine survives in full at HathiTrust; Burroughs had died in March 1921, so the piece ran posthumously.
No Edison speech, interview, letter, or diary is offered by any source as the origin of this exact wording.

Public domain

The line was first published in The Atlantic Monthly in October 1921 — well before the 1930 U.S. copyright cutoff — so the text is in the public domain in the United States.

Fact-check

Why it lands on Edison

Thomas Edison is one of the internet’s great magnets for freethinking one-liners, and this is one that isn’t his. The words belong to his friend and camping companion John Burroughs.

Thomas Edison Misattributed

Quote pages, image memes, and aggregators routinely stamp this on Edison, but Wikiquote files it under Misattributed and offers no Edison source for it.

John Burroughs

The sentence appears in Burroughs’s “Religious Contrasts: Letters of a Pantheist and a Churchman,” in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 128 (October 1921), p. 520 — the pantheist voice in that correspondence is Burroughs’s own.

The pantheist idiom is pure Burroughs; the fame is Edison’s — and the two men camped together as the “Vagabonds,” which is almost certainly how the line changed hands.

Context

Two skeptics, one line

Edison did hold irreverent views about scripture — he gave interviews doubting a personal God and a literal soul — so a line like this sounds like him, which is exactly why it sticks. But sounding like someone is not the same as being said by them.

The actual author, John Burroughs, wrote from a self-described pantheist standpoint: reverence directed at nature and “God’s deeds” rather than at any book. Published months after his death in 1921, the passage is a tidy statement of that creed — and a reminder of how easily a famous friend’s name can swallow a quieter writer’s words.

The pantheist voice is Burroughs’s; the byline the internet gave it is Edison’s.

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Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote — Thomas Edison (Misattributed)en.wikiquote.org

Lists this line among quotations misattributed to Edison and credits it to John Burroughs, Atlantic Monthly, October 1921.

The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 128 (1921) — HathiTrustbabel.hathitrust.org

Full scan of the July–December 1921 volume containing Burroughs's article at p. 520.

John Burroughs — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the naturalist-essayist, his pantheist outlook, and his camping friendship with Edison, Ford, and Firestone.

Thomas Edison quotes about God — Quoteparkquotepark.com

Aggregator entry that reproduces the line but flags it 'Misattributed,' repeating the Burroughs / Atlantic Monthly citation.

The Atlantic Monthly — Online Books Page indexonlinebooks.library.upenn.edu

Directory of freely readable Atlantic Monthly volumes for locating the 1921 issue.

The true author

John Burroughs

1837–1921 · American naturalist & nature essayist

John Burroughs (1837–1921) was one of America’s most widely read nature essayists, a founding figure of literary nature writing whose books blended close observation with a frankly pantheist philosophy that leaned toward religious skepticism. He was also a celebrated companion of the industrial age: he took long camping trips with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone — the group the press dubbed the “Vagabonds” — which is very likely how one of his lines came to be pinned on Edison.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary periodical

John Burroughs, “Religious Contrasts: Letters of a Pantheist and a Churchman,” The Atlantic Monthly 128, no. 4 (October 1921): 520.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I am much less interested in what is called God's word than in God's deeds’?” Last verified 10 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-am-much-less-interested-in-what-is-called-gods-word-than