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.

The remark criticizes a recurrent temptation within religious life: substituting doctrinal correctness and group identity for the ethical demand to alleviate suffering. Armstrong suggests that “being right” can become a form of ego-protection—religion is used to validate the self and the in-group rather than to cultivate humility, self-transcendence, and mercy. The quote aligns with her broader emphasis (across her work on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) that compassion is the core test of authentic religiosity, while rigid certainty can function as a psychological defense. It also implies that religion can be co-opted as a badge of identity politics, where faith serves the ego instead of challenging it.