All Quotes By Tag: Religion

“A man inferior with the blade or with his thoughts can still so elevate himself,” Entreri explained curtly, “if he can impart the belief that some god or other speaks through him. It is the greatest deception in all the world and one embraced by kings and lords, while the minor lying thieves on the streets or Calimport and other cities lose their tongues for so attempting to coax the purses of others.”

“When I was a child, Mama had the best voice of all the members of the church. She had loved to sing. Her words had soared like an angel’s over the swells of the organ. In fact, I now suspected, her entire theology had been taken from the hymnal.”

“Being rejected is not the end of your life, it’s a means to an end for your life. And that end is your destiny.”

“All religions are beautiful in the story, as you say. It’s when they’re put into practice that they grow ugly.”

“No matter how an individual views Satan, whether they believe that he is a real character or that he is just the product of literary scholars and imaginations, no one can deny that each one of us has an aspect of the devil within us. By studying the character and nature of Satan, we learn about ourselves; and the more we know about ourselves, the better we can fight our own personal demons—metaphorical or otherwise—in order to create a better tomorrow”

“If you want Allah to be persistent in granting you the thing you love, then be persistent in doing the things he loves.”

“البقاء مع الجماعة يبدد الفزع و لا شيء يثير الخوف مثل الانفراد… أم أذهب لكوخ مرتا القريب و أصلح ما انكسر بيننا ثم أتوسد الأرض تحت سريرها… أنا لا أعرف الكثير عنها… لم أرها من الداخل ولم أر أي شيء من داخله، أنا أطوّف دوما بظاهر الأشياء ولا أغوص فيها. بل إني أخشى أخشى الغوص في باطني، لكني أعرف حقيقة ذاتي الملتبسة,,, كل ما فيّملتبس… عمادي رهبنتي إيماني أشعاري معارفي الطبيّة محبتي لمرتا… أنا التباس في التباس! و الالتباس نقيض الإيمان، مثلما إبليس نقيض اللهالراهب هيبا في تأملاته”

“Above all we have to go beyond words and images and concepts. No imaginative vision or conceptual framework is adequate to the great reality.”

“ أيما أولى بالعاقل: إيثار العاجل في هذه المدة اليسيرة وحرمان الخير الدائم في الآخرة , أم ترك شيء حقير صغير منقطع عن قرب ليأخذ ما لا قيمة له, ولا خطر له, ولا نهاية لعدده, ولا غاية لأمده ”

“To an even moderately sophisticated and well-read person it should come as no surprise that any religion at all has its hidden as well as its obvious beauties and is capable of profound and impressive interpretations. What is deeply objectionable about most of these interpretations is that they allow the believer to say Yes while evading any No.”

“Why does a young Muslim, in the prime of life, with a full life ahead, go and blow himself up in a bus full of innocent passengers? In our countries, religion is the sole source of education, and this is the only spring from which that terrorist drank until his thirst was quenched. He was not born a terrorist, and did not become a terrorist overnight. Islamic teachings played a role in weaving his ideological fabric, thread by thread, and did not allow other sources—I am referring to scientific sources—to play a role. It was these teachings that distorted this terrorist, and killed his humanity; it was not [the terrorist] who distorted the religious teachings, and misunderstood them, as some ignorant people claim. When you recite to a child still in his early years the verse ‘They will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet on alternative sides cut off,’ regardless of this verse’s interpretation, and regardless of the reasons it was conveyed, or its time, you have made the first step towards creating a great terrorist.”

“He saw that science had become as great a hoax as religion, that nationalism was a farce, patriotism a fraud, education a form of leprosy, and that morals were for cannibals”

“As I work in the afternoon on committing to paper some of my morning’s thoughts, I find myself just about to close on the knotty question of whether or not I believe in God. In fact I am about to type, ‘I do not believe in God’, when the sky goes black as ink, there is a thunderclap and a huge crash of thunder and a downpour of epic proportions. I never do complete the sentence.”

“Atheism and agnosticism signify the rejection of certain images and concepts of God or of truth, which are historically conditioned and therefore inadequate. Atheism is a challenge to religion to purifiy its images and concepts and come nearer to the truth of divine mystery.”

“Infuriatingly stupid analysts – especially people who called themselves Arabists, yet who seemed to know next to nothing about the reality of the Islamic world – wrote reams of commentary [after 9/11]. Their articles were all about Islam saving Aristotle and the zero, which medieval Muslim scholars had done more than eight hundred years ago; about Islam being a religion of peace and tolerance, not the slightest bit violent. These were fairy tales, nothing to do with the real world I knew.”