Karen Armstrong Quotes About Ego

Quotes about: Ego

• Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment. It dethrones the ego from the center of our lives and puts others there, breaking down the carapace of the selfishness that holds us back from an experience of the sacred. And it gives us ecstasy, broadening our perspectives and giving us a larger, enhanced vision.

  Karen Armstrong

  Mean, Compassion, Perspective

  Karen Armstrong (2010). “The Spiral Staircase”, p.331, Vintage Canada

• 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.

  Karen Armstrong

  Atheist, Creativity, Self

• 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.

  Karen Armstrong

  Religious, Giving Up, People

  "FINDING MY RELIGION / Part 1: World-renowned religious scholar Karen Armstrong talks about today's religious conflicts and how the past can help". Interview with David Ian Miller, www.sfgate.com. April 10, 2006.

• I am not interested in the afterlife. Religion is supposed to be about losing your ego, not preserving it eternally in optimum conditions.

  Karen Armstrong

  Afterlife, Ego, Losing

• Every single one of the major world faiths, whether we're talking about Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Darwinism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have all come to the conclusion that what holds us back from our better self is ego, selfishness, greed, unkindness, hatred. And it all springs from a sense of thwarted ego.

  Karen Armstrong

  Spring, Buddhism, Talking

  "Big Think Interview With Karen Armstrong". Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

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