Karen Armstrong Quotes

We have no right to pick out all that is noblest and fairest in man, to project these qualities into space, and to call them God. We only thus create an ideal figure, a purified, ennobled, 'magnified' Man.

As human beings, we anthropomorphize way too much. God's not a person. God, for me, is a power that lies outside the definition of time and space.

Your thoughts of God are too human

If there's a God in heaven, what's he waiting for? If He can't hear the children, then he must see the war.

We offer up prayers to god only because we have made him after our own image. We treat him like a pasha, or a sultan, who is capable of being exasperated and appeased.

God is not a dead equation!

Our God listens to us. Our God is a living God. He's not a block of wood you made up that's not going to answer you. My God listens to me. He answers me.

Is God a man with two arms and legs like me? Does He have eyes, a head? Does He have bowels? Well I do, and that makes me more wonderful than He is!

I trust in God, and His ways are not our ways. So we have to go with that, and there's nothing I can do about that.

it was God's act and not mine.

If there is a God, it's going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed.

God has no resolve; no karma attaches itself to Him.

I ask why your Omnipotent God does not hold a man back when he is about to commit a sin or offence. It is child’s play for God. Why did He not kill war lords? Why did He not remove the fury of war from their minds? In this way God could have saved humanity from great calamity and horror.

Prayer is the slender nerve that moves the muscle of omnipotence.

Pray to Him anyway you like, He can even hear the footfall of an ant.

We spoke to God about the children, and we were afraid to ask God for specific things. We thought that it might be too much. So we said to God 'Please give us a healthy child' and left it at that, not knowing that God is a generous God, but also has a sense of humor. And if you leave that much open for God, some wonderful jokes are going to come about.

He is not the soul of Nature, nor any part of Nature. He inhabits eternity: He dwells in a high and holy place: heaven is His throne, not his vehicle, earth is his footstool, not his vesture. One day he will dismantle both and make a new heaven and earth. He is not to be identified even with the 'divine spark' in man. He is 'God and not man.

Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God, from Belief.

So let me tell you what I think about gods. I think a real god is not going to be so scared or angry that he tries to keep other people down…A real god doesn’t care about control. A real god already has control of everything that needs controlling. Real gods would want to teach you how to be just like them.

Urge all of your men to pray, not alone in church, but everywhere. Pray when driving. Pray when fighting. Pray alone. Pray with others. Pray by night and pray by day. Pray for the cessation of immoderate rains, for good weather for Battle.Pray for the defeat of our wicked enemy whose banner is injustice and whose good is oppression. Pray for victory. Pray for our Army, and Pray for Peace. We must march together, all out for God.

He touched the rough crucifix that lay against his chest and whispered to the moving air, "Lord, that she might be safe, she and my children." Then turned his cheek to her reaching hand and touched her throught the veils of time.

The god who presides over the Judeo-Christian belief system bears a disquieting resemblance to those imperfect creations known as human beings. This suggests that either he really did fashion us in his own image or we fashioned him in ours.

Bold prayers honor God, and God honors bold prayers… The bigger the circle we draw, the better, because God gets more glory. The greatest moments in life are the miraculous moments when human impotence and divine omnipotence intersect — and they intersect when we draw a circle around the impossible situations in our lives and invite God to intervene.

If that god is described as being all-powerful and all-knowing and all-good, I don't see evidence for it anywhere in the world. So I remain unconvinced. If that god is all-powerful and all-good, I don't see that when a tsunami kills a quarter-million or an earthquake kills a quarter-million people. I'd like to think of good as something in the interest of your health or longevity.

Asking God for a specific thing will amount to limiting God to a specific answer.