Karen Armstrong Quotes

I hate organized religion. I think you have to love thy neighbor as thyself. I think you have to pick your own God and be true to him. I always say 'him' rather than 'her.' Maybe it's because of my generation, but I don't like the idea of a female God. I see God as a benevolent male.

The enemy of science is not religion. Religion comes in endless shapes and forms... The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.

I grew up very religious, and I don't have a great relationship with religion.

My concern with religion is that it allows us by the millions to believe what only lunatics or idiots could believe on their own. That's not to say that all religious people are lunatics or idiots. It's anything but that.

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.

I just have a sense that, you know, I'm curious about what is religion about, you know? Why do some of us still engage it? It's not because it's a set of old beliefs or old ideas. Or even, particularly, the view that this is the only true religion. Many of us no longer accept those views.

I don't subscribe to organised religion. I've travelled enough to see that adherents of organised religion often attack adherents of other religions.

The problem with writing about religion is that you run the risk of offending sincerely religious people, and then they come after you with machetes.

If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences.

God save us from religion.

I love the idea of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the beautiful stories about it, which I loved in Sunday school and I collected all the little stickers and put them in my book. But the reality is that organised religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate.

There is nothing as potentially polarizing as religion.

Religion's war against fringe beliefs is not a contest of rational and irrational. It is a contest between different fantasy systems, one having more political and financial clout than the others and, therefore, able to advertise itself into respectability.

When a man is required to believe certain doctrines, he is not free to think. A creed is to keep the mind from inquiry. Questions lead to doubt, and doubt is the death of faith.

I've been atheist since I became aware of the term, but my material is not all about religion - not by a long shot - and when I do address the topic, it is to point out where religiosity meets discrimination.

A preacher who doesn't believe he's that bad will attract people who don't think they're that bad. And that's bad.

I honor religion except when it gets into shedding blood.

I'm still a person, a human being, no matter what religion I am.

Religion and philosophy, philosophy and religion - they're two words which are both... different. In spelling.

If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion.

I focused on where she was from of course, her voice and her history, her relationship with God - her religion. This was probably the strongest relationship she has had, really. She never seemed to maintain close relationships with husbands.

I think religion is a bunch of hooey, and I think that the holidays are an opportunity for people to get stressed out, getting their rush to shop. It's so conformist.

Biblical orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world.

The best religion is the most tolerant.

I'm sickened by all religions. Religion has divided people. I don't think there's any difference between the pope wearing a large hat and parading around with a smoking purse and an African painting his face white and praying to a rock.