Religion is hard work. Its insights are not self-evident and have to be cultivated in the same way as an appreciation of art, music, or poetry must b… - Karen Armstrong

We can either emphasize those aspects of our traditions, religious or secular, that speak of hatred, exclusion, and suspicion or work with those that stress the interdependence and equality of all human beings. The choice is yours. (22)

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.

All truly creative thought is in some sense intuitive; it demands a leap forward into the dark world of uncreated reality. Seen in this way, intuition is not the abdication of reason but rather reason speeded up, encapsulated in an instant, so that a solution appears without the usual laborious logical preparations. A creative genius comes back from this undiscovered country like ones of the heroes of antiquity, who has wrested something back from the gods and brought it to mankind. It is possible, perhaps, to see religious inspiration in a similar way.