"In the beginning there was nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better"
About this Quote
Creation gets punctured here not with blasphemy but with a comedian's most reliable tool: the deflating afterthought. DeGeneres takes the grand, booming cadence of Genesis and adds a tag you can hear landing after a beat of silence: "There was still nothing..". The joke works because it respects the myth's scale while refusing its solemnity. Light, in the biblical story, is ontology-a first act of order. In DeGeneres's version, light is basically better lighting. Not meaning, not moral architecture, just visibility.
The subtext is a gentle indictment of how humans confuse illumination with progress. We love the feeling of "clarity" - the bright, reassuring sense that a problem is being addressed - even when the underlying void hasn't changed. It's a gag about modern life as much as scripture: turn on the lights, upgrade the interface, add a dashboard, and suddenly nothing feels like something because it's easier to look at.
DeGeneres's comedic persona matters. Her delivery style trades in approachable understatement, not caustic takedowns. So the line isn't aimed at believers as targets; it's aimed at certainty itself. By treating God's first miracle as a cosmetic improvement, she makes room for skepticism without demanding it, offering a secular wink: the universe may be incomprehensible, but at least we can improve the visibility of our confusion.
The subtext is a gentle indictment of how humans confuse illumination with progress. We love the feeling of "clarity" - the bright, reassuring sense that a problem is being addressed - even when the underlying void hasn't changed. It's a gag about modern life as much as scripture: turn on the lights, upgrade the interface, add a dashboard, and suddenly nothing feels like something because it's easier to look at.
DeGeneres's comedic persona matters. Her delivery style trades in approachable understatement, not caustic takedowns. So the line isn't aimed at believers as targets; it's aimed at certainty itself. By treating God's first miracle as a cosmetic improvement, she makes room for skepticism without demanding it, offering a secular wink: the universe may be incomprehensible, but at least we can improve the visibility of our confusion.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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