“Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians have insisted for centuries that God does not exist and that there is 'nothing' out there; in making these assertions, their aim was not to deny the reality of God but to safeguard God's transcendence.”
― Karen Armstrong, quote from The Case for God
“Auschwitz was a dark epiphany, providing us with a terrible vision of what life is like when all sense of the sacred is lost and the human being--whoever he or she may be--is no longer revered as an inviolable mystery.”
― Karen Armstrong, quote from The Case for God
“In [the] early days, Muslims did not see Islam as a new, exclusive religion but as a continuation of the primordial faith of the ‘People of the Book’, the Jews and Christians. In one remarkable passage, God insists that Muslims must accept indiscriminately the revelations of every single one of God’s messengers: Abraham, Isaac, Ishamel, Jacob, Moses, Jesus and all the other prophets. The Qur’an is simply a ‘confirmation’ of the previous scriptures. Nobody must be forced to accept Islam, because each of the revealed traditions had its own din; it was not God’s will that all human beings should belong to the same faith community. God was not the exclusive property of any one tradition; the divine light could not be confined to a single lamp, belonged neither to the East or to the West, but enlightened all human beings. Muslims must speak courteously to the People of the Book, debate with them only in ‘the most kindly manner’, remember that they worshipped the same God, and not engage in pointless, aggressive disputes.”
― Karen Armstrong, quote from The Case for God
“لم يكن الطقس "الطقوس الدينية" في العالم قبل الحديث نتاج أفكار دينية بل على النقيض فقد كانت الأفكار نتاج الطقوس”
― Karen Armstrong, quote from The Case for God
“Some Western Christians read the story as a factual account of the Original Sin that condemned the human race to everlasting perdition. But this is a peculiarly Western Christian interpretation and was introduced controversially by Saint Augustine of Hippo only in the early fifth century. The Eden story has never been understood in this way in either the Jewish or the Orthodox Christian traditions. However, we all tend to see these ancient tales through the filter of subsequent history and project current beliefs onto texts that originally meant something quite different.”
― Karen Armstrong, quote from The Case for God
“Anybody who imagines that revealed religion requires a craven clinging to a fixed, unalterable, and self-evident truth should read the rabbis. Midrash required them to “investigate” and “go in search” of fresh insight. The rabbis used the old scriptures not to retreat into the past but to propel them into the uncertainties of the post-temple world.”
― Karen Armstrong, quote from The Case for God
“The Deuteronomists had made violence an option in the Judeo-Christian religion. It would always be possible to make these scriptures endorse intolerant policies.”
― Karen Armstrong, quote from The Case for God
“If a stranger lives with you in your land, do not molest him. You must treat him like one of your own people and love him as yourselves, for you were strangers in Egypt.”
― Karen Armstrong, quote from The Case for God
“Once you gave up the nervous craving to promote yourself, denigrate others, draw attention to your unique and special qualities, and ensure that you were first in the pecking order, you experienced an immense peace.”
― Karen Armstrong, quote from The Case for God
“There is also a widespread assumption that the Bible is supposed to provide us with role models and give us precise moral teaching, but this was not the intention of the biblical authors. The Eden story is certainly not a morality tale; like any paradise myth, it is an imaginary account of the infancy of the human race.”
― Karen Armstrong, quote from The Case for God
“Any interpretation of scripture that bred hatred or disdain for others was illegitimate,”
― Karen Armstrong, quote from The Case for God
“لم تكن الطقوس الدينية في العالم قبل الحديث مناج أفكار دينية بل على النقيض فقد كانت الأفكار نتاج الطقوس”
― Karen Armstrong, quote from The Case for God
“The French philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973) distinguished between a problem, “something met which bars my passage” and “is before me in its entirety,” and a mystery, “something in which I find myself caught up, and whose essence is not before me in its entirety.”69”
― Karen Armstrong, quote from The Case for God
“He claimed gleefully that he had no opinions at all, because he had no self. A poet, he believed, was ‘the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity’.75 True poetry had no time for ‘the egotistical sublime’,76 which forced itself on the reader:”
― Karen Armstrong, quote from The Case for God
“A disorderly spirituality that makes the practitioner dreamy, eccentric, or uncontrolled is a very bad sign indeed. In”
― Karen Armstrong, quote from The Case for God
“نفرط في أيامنا هذه، في الحديث عن الله، بيد أن معظم ما نقوله يتسم بالسطحية والتبسيط. نعتقد، في مجتمعنا الديمقراطي، أن مفهوم الرب يجب أن يكون سهلًا، وأن يكون الدين متاحًا للجميع، كثيرًا ما يقول لي القرّاء، على سبيل العتاب، أن كتابي هذا أو ذاك صعب. وأريد أن أجيب "إنه عن الله" لكن الكثيرون يجدون إجابتي محيرة. فمن المؤكد أن الجميع يعرفون من هو الله: الكائن الأعظم الذي خلق العالم وكل شيء فيه. تظهر عليهم الحيرة حين نبين أنه من غير الدقة أن نسمي "الله" الكائن الأعظم لأن الله ليس كائنًا على الإطلاق، وأننا لا نعرف مانعنيه حينما نقول إنه "خيّر" أو "حكيم" أو "ذكي".”
― Karen Armstrong, quote from The Case for God
“so Enlightenment philosophers developed a new form of theism, based entirely on reason and Newtonian science, which they called Deism.”
― Karen Armstrong, quote from The Case for God
“He insisted that it was impossible to understand a single word of the Book of Nature without knowing the language of mathematics.”
― Karen Armstrong, quote from The Case for God
Karen Armstrong
Born place: in Wildmoor, Worcestershire, The United Kingdom
Born date November 14, 1944
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“Perhaps he'd been using Just for Gods hair cream.”
― Kevin Hearne, quote from Hunted
“But stories are fragile. Like people's lives. It only takes a word out of place to change them forever. If you hear a lovely tune, and then you change it, the new tune might be lovely too, but you've lost the first one." "But if I stick to the first tune, then I've lost the second." "But someone else might discover it. It's still there to be born." "And the first tune isn't?" "No," Tallis insisted, although she was confused now. "It has already come into your mind. It's lost forever." "Nothing is lost forever," Mr. Williams said quietly. "Everything I've known I still know, only sometimes I don't know that I know it." All things are known, but most things are forgotten. It takes a special magic to remember them. "My grandfather said something like that to me," Tallis whispered. "Well there you are. Wise Old Men, one and all…”
― Robert Holdstock, quote from Lavondyss
“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings ~ Lao Tzu.”
― Tammara Webber, quote from Breakable
“Was war, then, the big solution after all? Were those crude early theorists right? War the great aphrodisiac, the great source of world adrenaline, the solvent of ennui, Angst, melancholia, accidia, spleen? War itself a massive sexual act, culminating in a detumescence which was not mere metaphorical dying? War, finally, the controller, the trimmer and excisor, the justifier of fertility?”
― Anthony Burgess, quote from The Wanting Seed
“Now quit your bellyaching and dance with me, you subaquatic fool. - Susan, to Gordon (The Horror Writers' Halloween Ball)”
― Derek Landy, quote from Armageddon Outta Here
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Chuang Tzu: Basic Wr...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
