Karen Armstrong Quotes.

1. "Geniuses are not always pleasant people."
- Quote by Karen Armstrong

2. "A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was a tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect, he becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all‐knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified."
- Quote by Karen Armstrong

3. "Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else."
- Quote by Karen Armstrong

4. "A personalized God can be a mere idol carved in our own image- a projection of our limited needs, fears, and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them. When he seems to fail to prevent a catastrophe or seems even to desire a tragedy, he can seem callous and cruel. A facile belief that a disaster is the will of God can make us accept things that are fundamentally unacceptable. The very fact, as a person, God has a gender is also limiting: It means that the sexuality of half the human race is sacralized at the expense of the female and can lead to neurotic and inadequate imbalance in human sexual mores. A personal God can be dangerous, therefore. Instead of pulling us beyond our limitations, he can encourage us to remain complacently within them; he can make us cruel, callous, self-satisfied and partial as he seems to be. Instead of inspiring the compassion that should characterize all advanced religions, he can encourage us to judge, condemn, and marginalize."
- Quote by Karen Armstrong

5. "And sometimes it's the very otherness of a stranger, someone who doesn't belong to our ethnic or ideological or religious group, an otherness that can repel us initially, but which can jerk us out of our habitual selfishness, and give us intonations of that sacred otherness, which is God."
- Quote by Karen Armstrong

6. "Fundamentalists are not friends of democracy. And that includes your fundamentalists in the United States."
- Quote by Karen Armstrong

7. "Religion isn’t about believing things. It's ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness."
- Quote by Karen Armstrong

8. "نسأل الله دائما أن يبارك امتنا،ويحمي ملكتنا،ويشفي أمراضنا،ويمنحنا طقسا جميلا يوم رحلتنا. نذكر الله بأنه خلق العالم وبأننا خطاءون تعساء، وكأنما قد نسى هو ذلك. يستشهد السياسيون بالله لتبرير سياساتهم، ويستخدم المدرسون اسمه للحفتظ على النظام بالفصول، والإرهابيون لارتكاب بشاعاتهم باسمه. نتوسل إلى الله أن يدعم جانبنا في الانتخابات أو الحرب، حتى على الرغم من أنه من المفترض أن أعداءنا هم أيضا أطفال الله وموضوع حبه ورعايته."
- Quote by Karen Armstrong

9. "Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity."
- Quote by Karen Armstrong

10. "...the experience of reading a novel has certain qualities that remind us of the traditional apprehension of mythology. It can be seen as a form of meditation. Readers have to live with a novel for days or even weeks. It projects them into another world, parallel to but apart from their ordinary lives. They know perfectly well that this fictional realm is not 'real' and yet while they are reading it becomes compelling. A powerful novel becomes part of the backdrop of our lives, long after we have laid the book asie. It is an exercise of make-believe that, like yoga or a religious festival, breaks down barriers of space and time and extends our sympathies, so that we are able to empathise with others lives and sorrows. It teaches compassion, the ability to 'feel with' others. And, like mythology, an important novel is transformative. If we allow it to do so, it can change us forever."
- Quote by Karen Armstrong