“The word qur’an means “recitation.””

— Karen Armstrong

It was not designed for private perusal, but like most scriptures, it was meant to be read aloud, and the sound was an essential part of the sense. Poetry was important in Arabia. The poet was the spokesman, social historian, and cultural authority of his tribe, and over the years the Arabs had learned how to listen to a recitation and had developed a highly sophisticated critical ear.
Muhammad: A Prophet of Our Times
Muhammad: A Biography of The Prophet (2001)

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Karen Armstrong 56

author and comparative religion scholar from Great Britain 1944

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“Recite the Qur’an in such a way that your hearts develop a love for it and your skin becomes softened by it. However as soon as your hearts become indifferent to it (meaning that the Qur’an has no effect on you), then stop reciting it.”

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“The word qur’an means “recitation.” It was not designed for private perusal, but like most scriptures, it was meant to be read aloud, and the sound was an essential part of the sense. Poetry was important in Arabia. The poet was the spokesman, social historian, and cultural authority of his tribe, and over the years the Arabs had learned how to listen to a recitation and had developed a highly sophisticated critical ear.”

Karen Armstrong (1944) author and comparative religion scholar from Great Britain

Muhammad: A Prophet of Our Times
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“The superiority of the Qur’an over the rest of words, is like the superiority of Allah over His creations.”

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“There are official proclamations, full of the notion of liberty and rights, which would be beautiful if they said truly what they say. But they who compose them do not attach their full meaning to the words. What they recite they are not capable of wanting, nor even of understanding.”

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Context: There are official proclamations, full of the notion of liberty and rights, which would be beautiful if they said truly what they say. But they who compose them do not attach their full meaning to the words. What they recite they are not capable of wanting, nor even of understanding. The one indisputable sign of progress in ideas to-day is that there are things which they dare no longer leave publicly unsaid, and that's all. There are not all the political parties that there seem to be. They swarm, certainly, as numerous as the cases of short sight; but there are only two — the democrats and the conservatives. Every political deed ends fatally either in one or the other, and all their leaders have always a tendency to act in the direction of reaction.

“He's probably their battle poet, too."
"You mean he makes up heroic songs about famous battles?"
"No, no. He recites poems that frighten the enemy…. When a well-trained gonnagle starts to recite, the enemy's ears explode.”

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“I memorized it word for word after having heard it but once. Yet, despite my retentive memory, I found it impossible to recite when I went back into the classroom.”

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“We are students of words: we are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation -rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing.”

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“What I read in the Qur’an, and what I learned from the words of Muhammad, Jesus and others really struck a chord with me, so I chose to implement the wisdom I found.”

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Context: What I read in the Qur’an, and what I learned from the words of Muhammad, Jesus and others really struck a chord with me, so I chose to implement the wisdom I found. I don’t feel as though I "changed" to any new "religion", rather, I just grew as an individual: I matured spiritually. … I believe the proverbial "search" doesn’t end until we die.

“Even if Subbalakshmi merely recited the words of her songs without singing them, he would prefer to hear them than anybody else.”

M. S. Subbulakshmi (1916–2004) singer,Carnatic vocalist

Mahatma Gandhi quoted here.[Johri, Meera, Greatness of Spirit: Profiles of Indian Magsaysay Award Winners, http://books.google.com/books?id=j1iegDJAYakC&pg=PA55, 2010, Rajpal & Sons, 978-81-7028-858-9, 58]
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“One should not be deceived by philosophical works that pretend to be mathematical, but are merely dubious and murky metaphysics. Just because a philosopher can recite the words lemma, theorem and corollary doesn't mean that his work has the certainty of mathematics. That certainty does not derive from big words, or even from the method used by geometers, but rather from the utter simplicity of the objects considered by mathematics.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

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“The word qur’an means “recitation.””

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Karen Armstrong 56

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