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Like art, religion is an imaginative and creative effort to find a meaning and value in human life. -- Karen Armstrong
We have a duty to get to know one another, and to cultivate a concern and responsibility for all our neighbors in the global village. -- Karen Armstrong
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
It's quite common for a Sufi mystic to cry in ecstasy that he's neither a Jew, a Christian, nor a Muslim. He is at home equally in a synagogue, a mosque, a temple, or a church because when one's glimpsed the divine, one's left these man-made distinctions behind. -- Karen Armstrong
Every single one of the major traditions - Confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, as well as the monotheisms - teaches a spirituality of empathy, by means of which you relate your own suffering to that of others. -- Karen Armstrong
Humiliate your enemy is dangerous. -- Karen Armstrong
After I left the convent, for 15 years I was worn out with religion, I wanted nothing whatever to do with it. I felt disgusted with it. If I saw someone reading a religious book on a train, I'd think, how awful. -- Karen Armstrong
What is lawful, what is unlawful?" asked Ku Yuan, prince and poet of Chu. "This country is a slough of despond! Nothing is pure any longer! Informers are exalted! And wise men of gentle birth are without renown!"3 -- Karen Armstrong
What do you think Socrates meant when he said, "The unexamined life is not worth living"? Third, -- Karen Armstrong
We have domesticated God's transcendence. We often learn about God at about the same time as we are learning about Santa Claus; but our ideas about Santa Claus change, mature and become more nuanced, whereas our ideas of God can remain at a rather infantile level. -- Karen Armstrong
Mythology was never designed to describe historically verifiable events that actually happened. It was an attempt to express their inner significance or to draw attention to realities that were too elusive to be discussed in a logically coherent way. -- Karen Armstrong
Deeds that seemed unimportant at the time would prove to have been momentous; a tiny act of selfishness and unkindness or, conversely, an unconsidered act of generosity would become the measure of a human life -- Karen Armstrong
I have a very sharp tongue, I'm very impatient, and it's a lifelong struggle. -- Karen Armstrong
I did not want to appear before the world as pathetic, deprssed, and psychologically ill. So I erected a barrier of words and wit around myself, so that nobody could see how needy I really was. -- Karen Armstrong
If professional religious leaders cannot instruct us in mythological lore, our artists and creative writers can perhaps step into this priestly role and bring fresh insight to our lost and damaged role. -- Karen Armstrong
novel, like a myth, teaches us to see the world differently; it shows us how to look into our own hearts and to see our world from a perspective that goes beyond our own self-interest. If -- Karen Armstrong
Martin Luther King Jr. believed that the highest point of Jesus's life was the moment when he forgave his executioners, -- Karen Armstrong
We talk about God as though he was like a somebody. We ask him to bless our nation, or save our Queen, or give us a fine day for the picnic. And we actually expect him to be on our side in an election or war even though our opponents are also God's children. -- Karen Armstrong
So, we think about God far to easily and that's because of a lot of social, intellectual, and scientific changes that have taken place in the western world and that has made God very problematic for a lot of people. -- Karen Armstrong
Ever since the Crusades, when Christians from western Europe were fighting holy wars against Muslims in the near east, western people have often perceived Islam as a violent and intolerant faith - even though when this prejudice took root Islam had a better record of tolerance than Christianity. -- Karen Armstrong
The hajj is one of the five essential practices of Islam; when they make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims ritually act out the central principles of their faith. -- Karen Armstrong
It is always tempting to try to shut out the suffering that is an inescapable part of the human condition, but once it has broken through the cautionary barricades we have erected against it, we can never see the world in the same way again. -- Karen Armstrong
We want to create, never mind the leaders or the bishops or chief rabbis or imams, or Popes. We want to create a grassroots movement where people will become attuned to uncompassionate discourse in the same way as we are now attuned to sort of gender imbalance in our speech. -- Karen Armstrong
In order to always treat others, as we would wish to be treated ourselves, we have to learn about each other. Not just relying on an op-ed piece we may have read here, or a half-remembered interview on the television program there that happens to chime with our own views. -- Karen Armstrong
A person who is impartial, fair, calm, gentle, serene, accepting, and openhearted is indeed a refuge. -- Karen Armstrong
There was a growing conviction that religion had to become as rational as modern science. -- Karen Armstrong
We are what we are because of the hard work, insights and achievements of countless others. -- Karen Armstrong
I like silence; I'm a gregarious loner and without the solitude, I lose my gregariousness. -- Karen Armstrong
And sometimes it's the very otherness of a stranger, someone who doesn't belong to our ethnic or ideological or religious group, an otherness that can repel us initially, but which can jerk us out of our habitual selfishness, and give us intonations of that sacred otherness, which is God. -- Karen Armstrong
Often when religious leaders come together, they talk about a particular sexual ethic, or an abstruse doctrine, as though this, rather than compassion, was the test of spiritual life. -- Karen Armstrong
if we harm our neighbors, we also inflict damage on ourselves. There -- Karen Armstrong
You put yourself in the receptive frame of mind with which we approach music or poetry, which you can measure the difference on a neurological scanner. -- Karen Armstrong
Some people simply bury their heads in the sand and refuse to think about the sorrow of the world, but this is an unwise course, because, if we are entirely unprepared, the tragedy of life can be devastating. -- Karen Armstrong
To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself to us as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms - this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of all true religiousness. -- Karen Armstrong
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 be developed. -- Karen Armstrong
Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied later Christians. He went around doing good and being compassionate. -- Karen Armstrong
Whatever conclusions we reach about the reality of God, the history of this idea must tell us something important about the human mind and the nature of our aspiration. -- Karen Armstrong
Mythology was not about theology, in the modern sense, but about human experience. People thought that gods, humans, animals and nature were inextricably bound up together, subject to the same laws, and composed of the same divine substance. There -- Karen Armstrong
There is a danger in monotheism, and it's called idolatry. And we know the prophets of Israel were very, very concerned about idolatry, the worship of a human expression of the divine. -- Karen Armstrong
Today mythical thinking has fallen into disrepute; we often dismiss it as irrational and self-indulgent. But the imagination is also the faculty that has enabled scientists to bring new knowledge to light and to invent technology that has made us immeasurably more effective. -- Karen Armstrong
The first person to promulgate the Golden Rule, which was the bedrock of this empathic spirituality, was Confucius 500 years before Christ. -- Karen Armstrong
It did seem unjust that Jane, who was by far the abler of the two, should sacrifice her career for Mark's. -- Karen Armstrong
A mode of knowledge rooted in silence and intuitive insight which gives meaning to life but which cannot be explained in rational terms. -- Karen Armstrong
At the beginning of the twentieth century, every single leading Muslim intellectual was in love with the west, and wanted their countries to look just like Britain and France. -- Karen Armstrong
We are addicted to our egotism, our likes and dislikes and prejudices, and depend upon them for our own sense of identity. -- Karen Armstrong
At their best, all religious, philosophical, and ethical traditions are based on the principle of compassion. I -- Karen Armstrong
even the presidents of Harvard and Yale saw the War of Independence as part of God's design for the overthrow of Catholicism. -- Karen Armstrong
The great task of our time is to build a global society, where people can live together in peace -- Karen Armstrong
If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void. (95) -- Karen Armstrong
In the past some of the most influential Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians, such as Maimonides, Aquinas and Ibn Sina, made it clear that it was very difficult to speak about God, because when we confront the ultimate, we are at the end of what words or thoughts can do. -- Karen Armstrong
All religions are designed to teach us how to live, joyfully, serenely, and kindly, in the midst of suffering. -- Karen Armstrong
Huge imbalance in power has resulted in the alienation, rage, fury, and awful amoral terrorism that has erupted and is erupting at the present time. And in order to counter this, we need to make the compassionate voice of religion and morality a dynamic force in our world. -- Karen Armstrong
The study of the traditions doesn't necessarily make you want to convert to another tradition, but it helps you to see your own differently and expands your outlook. -- Karen Armstrong
Sumer had devised the system of structural violence that would prevail in every single agrarian state until the modern period, when agriculture ceased to be the economic basis of civilization. -- Karen Armstrong
Saint Augustine ... insisted that scripture taught nothing but charity. Whatever the biblical author may have intended, any passage that seemed to preach hatred and was not conducive to love must be interpreted allegorically and made to speak of charity. -- Karen Armstrong
[T]he family is a school of compassion because it is here that we learn to live with other people. (68) -- Karen Armstrong
Unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that can keep abreast of our technological genius, it is unlikely that we will save our planet. A purely rational education will not suffice. -- Karen Armstrong
Religion is not a nice thing. It is potentially a very dangerous thing because it involves a heady complex of emotions, desires, yearnings and fears. -- Karen Armstrong
Since all premodern state ideology was inseparable from religion, warfare inevitably acquired a sacral element. -- Karen Armstrong
Muhammad had close links with three of the leading hanifs of Mecca. 'Ubaydallah ibn Jahsh was his cousin and Waraqah ibn Nawfal was a cousin of Khadijah: both these men became Christians. -- Karen Armstrong
Nirvana is something within you. It is not an external reality. No god thunders down from the mountaintop. Just as the great mystics in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths all discovered, God is within the self. God is virtually inseparable from ourselves. -- Karen Armstrong
If we don't manage to implement the Golden Rule globally, so that we treat all peoples, wherever and whoever they may be, as though they were as important as ourselves, I doubt that we'll have a viable world to hand on to the next generation. -- Karen Armstrong
Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious concept. -- Karen Armstrong
Charity," Davidson continues, "is forced on us, whether we like it or not; if we want to understand others, we must count them right in most matters."13 -- Karen Armstrong
We find a combination of three themes that would recur in the ideology of all successful empires: a dualistic worldview that pits the good of empire against evildoers who oppose it; a doctrine of election that sees the ruler as a divine agent; and a mission to save the world.128 -- Karen Armstrong
I remind myself that my pain is not unique. Everybody suffers. -- Karen Armstrong
Here in America, religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. They've lost the Axial Age vision of concern for everybody. -- Karen Armstrong
When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, they probably did not fall into a state of original sin, as Saint Augustine believed, but into an agrarian economy. -- Karen Armstrong
In the eleventh century, a Jerusalem rabbi still recalled with gratitude the mercy God had shown his people when he allowed the "Kingdom of Ishmael" to conquer Palestine. -- Karen Armstrong
Then, as now, there would always be people who preferred the option of devoting their religious energies to sacred space over the more difficult duty of compassion. -- Karen Armstrong
You have to get into the water and learn against what seems to be the law gravity to float and dancing, or athletics takes you years before you develop a skill. But if you work at it, practicing daily, you can enable your body to do things that are utterly impossible to an untrained physic. -- Karen Armstrong
Islam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying in a devastating, disgraceful, helpless death. -- Karen Armstrong
Compassion is the key in Islam and Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity. They are profoundly similar. -- Karen Armstrong
Yet a personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs. fears and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them. -- Karen Armstrong
Compassion has to become a discipline. It's something that you do. It's no good thinking that you agree with compassion or not, you've just got to do it. Just like it's no good agreeing that it's possible to float, you just have to get into the pool and then you learn that it's possible. -- Karen Armstrong
A gentleman is not born but crafted. He had to work on himself in the same way as a sculptor shaped a rough stone and made it a thing of beauty. -- Karen Armstrong
Christmas Day 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne "Holy Roman Emperor" in the Basilica of St. Peter. The congregation acclaimed him as "Augustus," and Leo prostrated himself at Charlemagne's feet. -- Karen Armstrong
Once you gave up the nervous craving to promote yourself, denigrate others, draw attention to your unique and special qualities, and ensure that you were first in the pecking order, you experienced an immense peace. -- Karen Armstrong
People worship different things; there must be 'no coercion in matters of faith! -- Karen Armstrong
My greatest solace is my study. If I am deprived of my study, I can become lost, unhappy and unhinged. -- Karen Armstrong
The Rhineland cities were developing the market economy that would eventually replace agrarian civilization; they were therefore in the very early stages of modernization, a transition that always strains social relations. -- Karen Armstrong
The Deuteronomists had made violence an option in the Judeo-Christian religion. It would always be possible to make these scriptures endorse intolerant policies. -- Karen Armstrong
Zionism was originally a rebellion against religious Judaism and the PLO Charter was essentially secularist. But because the conflict was allowed to fester without a resolution, religion got sucked into the escalating cycle of violence and became part of the problem. -- Karen Armstrong
I learned a lot from both, initially Jewish and Muslim theologians that had been missing, perhaps from my rather parochial Catholic upbringing. -- Karen Armstrong
the sacred reality is not simply transcendent, "out there," but is enshrined in every single human being, who must, therefore, be treated with absolute honor and respect. -- Karen Armstrong
But during the nineteenth century, Europe was reconfigured into clearly defined states ruled by a central government. -- Karen Armstrong
The Taliban travesty, a noxious combination of Deobandi rigidity, tribal chauvinism, and the aggression of the traumatized war orphan. -- Karen Armstrong
The great genius of the Shiah was its tragic perception that it is impossible fully to implement the ideals of religion in the inescapably violent realm of politics. -- Karen Armstrong
The Quran gave women rights of inheritance and divorce centuries before Western women were accorded such status. The -- Karen Armstrong
One of the characteristics of early modern thought was a tendency to assume binary contrasts. In an attempt to define phenomena more exactly, categories of experience that had once co-inhered were now set off against each other: faith and reason, intellect and emotion, and church and state. -- Karen Armstrong
And so, one of the reasons why I started my Charter for Compassion, was to bring the Golden Rule back to the center of religion and morality and not put other's secondary goals, less demand goals, into the forefront -- Karen Armstrong
In the West, we have deliberately excluded religion from political life and regard faith as an essentially private activity. But this is a modern development, dating only to the eighteenth century, and would have been incomprehensible to both Jesus and Paul. -- Karen Armstrong
The Qur'an was attempting to give women a legal status that most Western women would not enjoy until the nineteenth century. The -- Karen Armstrong
Many entire nations are marginalised by the more powerful nations. That is causing imbalance, violence and terror. Women must do their best to introduce another perspective. -- Karen Armstrong
Auschwitz was a dark epiphany, providing us with a terrible vision of what life is like when all sense of the sacred is lost and the human being
whoever he or she may be
is no longer revered as an inviolable mystery. -- Karen Armstrong
our version of the same event is also likely to be a reflection upon our own situation and suffering rather than a dispassionate and wholly factual account. We -- Karen Armstrong
When you feel compassion, you dethrone yourself from the centre of the world. -- Karen Armstrong
Mythology and science both extend the scope of human beings. Like science and technology, mythology, as we shall see, is not about opting out of this world, but about enabling us to live more intensely within it. -- Karen Armstrong
We can't say what God is, and until the modern period, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians in the three God religions all knew that. They insisted that we have no idea what we meant when we said that God was good, or wise, or intelligent. -- Karen Armstrong
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
Well, logos is science or reason, something that helps us to function practically and effectively in the world, and it must therefore be closely in tune and reflect accurately the realities of the world around us. -- Karen Armstrong
In the holy city of Mecca, violence of any kind was forbidden. From the moment they left home, pilgrims were not permitted to carry weapons, to swat an insect or speak an angry word, a discipline that introduced them to a new way of living. -- Karen Armstrong
Let us bring something new to the table. Let us use our pain always to remember the others, bring them into the conversation, and get beyond the stereotypes and prejudices that create injustice all over the world. -- Karen Armstrong
You are your best self when you give yourself away. -- Karen Armstrong
Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians have insisted for centuries that God does not exist and that there is 'nothing' out there; in making these assertions, their aim was not to deny the reality of God but to safeguard God's transcendence. -- Karen Armstrong
We have to make a disciplined effort to find out what our governments are doing in these various parts of the world and what is actually happening. We have to learn to listen to each other's stories. Something we are not very good at. -- Karen Armstrong
If a stranger lives with you in your land, do not molest him. You must treat him like one of your own people and love him as yourselves, for you were strangers in Egypt. -- Karen Armstrong
I no longer think that any principle or opinion is worth anything if it makes you unkind or intolerant. -- Karen Armstrong
By using feminist arguments, for which most had little or no sympathy, as part of their propaganda, the colonialists tainted the cause of feminism in the Muslim world, and helped to distort the faith by introducing an imbalance that had not existed before.83 The -- Karen Armstrong
If your child dies, or you witness a terrible natural disaster, yes, you certainly want a scientific explanation as to what's happened. But science can't help you to find meaning, help you deal with that turbulence of your grief, rage, and dismay. -- Karen Armstrong
Mohammed was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success, politically as well as spiritually, and Islam went from strength to strength to strength. -- Karen Armstrong
There is no ascent to the heights without prior descent into darkness, no new life without some form of death. -- Karen Armstrong
Religions have always stressed that compassion is not only central to religious life, it is the key to enlightenment and it the true test of spirituality. But there have always have been those who'd rather put easier goals, like doctrine conformity, in place. -- Karen Armstrong
Religions don't own compassion; it is a human virtue. -- Karen Armstrong
Eminent monotheists in all three faiths - that instead of waiting for God to descend from on high, I should deliberately create a sense of him for myself. -- Karen Armstrong
A double standard, albeit unintended, violates our integrity and damages our credibility. In a global society, conflict is rarely the fault of only one party. -- Karen Armstrong
Yes, all fundamentalists feel that in a secular society, God has been relegated to the margin, to the periphery and they are all in different ways seeking to drag him out of that peripheral position, back to center stage. -- Karen Armstrong
included: no religious doctrine or practice can be authentic if it does not lead to practical compassion. -- Karen Armstrong
Respect only has meaning as respect for those with whom I do not agree. -- Karen Armstrong
Every fundamentalist movement I've studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced at some gut, visceral level that secular liberal society wants to wipe out religion. -- Karen Armstrong
If we want to create a viable, peaceful world, we've got to integrate compassion into the gritty realities of 21st century life. -- Karen Armstrong
A theology should be like poetry, which takes us to the end of what words and thoughts can do. -- Karen Armstrong
There is always a moment in warfare when the horrifying reality breaks through the glamour. -- Karen Armstrong
Their monstrous forms represent the perverse defiance of normal categories and the confusion of identity associated with social and cosmic disorder. -- Karen Armstrong
Understanding different national, cultural, and religious traditions is no longer a luxury; it is now a necessity and must become a priority. The -- Karen Armstrong
My ideas about God were formed in childhood and did not keep abreast of my growing knowledge in other disciplines. I -- Karen Armstrong
What mattered was not what you believed but how you behaved. Religion was about doing things that changed you at a profound level. -- Karen Armstrong
dialogue led participants not to certainty but to a shocking realization of the profundity of human ignorance. However carefully, logically, and rationally Socrates and his friends analyzed a topic, something always eluded them. -- Karen Armstrong
Even before 9/11 I was gripped by a sense of dread: our lack of criticism about what we were doing in the Middle East - the slagging off of a whole religious tradition. -- Karen Armstrong
Any interpretation of scripture that bred hatred or disdain for others was illegitimate, -- Karen Armstrong
Jefferson the deist was accused of being an atheist and even a Muslim. -- Karen Armstrong
We have seen that, like the weather, religion "does lots of different things." To claim that it has a single, unchanging, and inherently violent essence is not accurate. Identical religious beliefs and practices have inspired diametrically opposed courses of action. -- Karen Armstrong
Some Palaeolithic heroes survived in later mythical literature. The Greek hero Herakles, for example, is almost certainly a relic of the hunting period. -- Karen Armstrong
I am continually trying to find meaning in the world. If we cannot find some ultimate significance or value in our lives, we fall very easily into despair. -- Karen Armstrong
Religion starts with the perception that something is wrong. -- Karen Armstrong
Well, the idea of God as a supreme being means that he is simply like us, writ large, and just bigger and better, the end product of the series; whereas this divine personality that we meet in the Bible was, for centuries, regarded simply as a symbol of a greater transcendence that lay beyond it. -- Karen Armstrong
The trouble with a lot of modern theology and a lot of modern thinking about God, is that we think of God a sort of being like ourselves, but bigger and better with likes and dislikes similar to our own. -- Karen Armstrong
If we try to hold on to our partial glimpses of the divine, we cut it down to our own size and close our minds. Like it or nor, our human experience of anything or anybody is always incomplete: there is usually something that eludes us, some portion of experience that evades our grasp. -- Karen Armstrong
Far from being the father of jihad, [Prophet] Mohammad was a peacemaker, who risked his life and nearly lost the loyalty of his closest companions because he was determined to effect a reconciliation with Mecca -- Karen Armstrong
Ironically, the first thing that appealed to me about Islam was its pluralism. The fact that the Koran praises all the great prophets of the past. -- Karen Armstrong
Let's use our stories to encourage listening to one another and to hear not just the good news, but also the pain that lies at the back of a lot of people's stories and histories. -- Karen Armstrong
the attempt to become a compassionate human being is a lifelong project. -- Karen Armstrong
There is something wrong with any spirituality that does not inspire selfless concern for others -- 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) -- Karen Armstrong
Ashoka's dilemma is the dilemma of civilization itself. As society developed and weaponry became more deadly, the empire, founded on and maintained by violence, would paradoxically become the most effective means of keeping the peace. -- Karen Armstrong
Compassion doesn't, of course, mean feeling sorry for people, or pity, which is how the word has become emasculated in a way. -- Karen Armstrong
As the philosopher Walter Benjamin put it: "There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism."24 -- Karen Armstrong
If we could view Muhammad as we do any other important historical figure we would surely consider him to be one of the greatest geniuses the world has known. -- Karen Armstrong
Compassion is a practically acquired knowledge, like dancing. You must do it and practice diligently day by day. -- Karen Armstrong
You who reject the faith (kafirun) I do not worship what you worship And you do not worship what I worship I am not a worshipper of what you worship You are not a worshipper of what I worship. A reckoning (din) for you and a reckoning for me.72 -- Karen Armstrong
Intelligence doesn't just mean tracking down terrorists; It means finding out what is in people's hearts and minds and discovering the complexity of most issues. -- Karen Armstrong
Religion isn't about believing things. It's ethical alchemy. It's about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness. -- Karen Armstrong
The early doctrines of the church, even doctrines like Trinity and Incarnation were originally also calls for action, calls for selflessness, calls for compassion, and unless you live that out compassionately, selflessly, you didn't understand what the doctrine was saying. -- Karen Armstrong
This strong female presence was remarkable in the aggressive patriarchy of Mecca and may explain why women were among the first to respond to the message of the Qur'an. -- Karen Armstrong
Krishna explains. When enemies become too numerous and powerful, they should be slain by deceit and stratagems. This was the path formerly trodden by the devas to slay the asuras; and a path trodden by the virtuous may be trodden by all. -- Karen Armstrong
Skeletal remains show that plant-fed humans were a head shorter than meat-eating hunters, prone to anemia, infectious diseases, rotten teeth, and bone disorders. -- Karen Armstrong
We constantly have ideas and experiences that go beyond what we can say or know. Most often these are expressed in art, in painting, in music. Music, everyday confronts us with a form of knowing that doesn't depend on words. -- Karen Armstrong
In a conservative society, stability and order were far more important than freedom of expression. -- Karen Armstrong
You entered into a Socratic dialogue in order to change; the object of the exercise was to create a new, more authentic self. -- Karen Armstrong
When the horror recedes and the world resumes its normal shape, you cannot forget it. You have seen what is really there, the empty horror that exists when the consoling illusion of our mundane experience is stripped away, so you can never respond to the world in quite the same way again. -- Karen Armstrong
Pain is something that's common to human life. When we ignore it, we aren't engaging in the whole reality, and the pain begins to fester. -- Karen Armstrong
Compassion is not feeling sorry for others. It's not soft. It requires an intellectual effort. -- Karen Armstrong
The Socratic dialogue was a spiritual exercise designed to produce a profound psychological change in the participants, and because its purpose was that each person should understand the depth of his ignorance, there was no way that anybody could win. Plato -- Karen Armstrong
And how could I hope to sense God's presence when I continually broke the silence, frequently had uncharitable thoughts, and above all, constantly yearned for human affection and wept when reprimanded? -- Karen Armstrong
all who benefit from the inherent violence of the state are implicated in its cruelty. -- Karen Armstrong
Religious ideas and practices take root not because they are promoted by forceful theologians, nor because they can be shown to have a sound historical or rational basis, but because they are found in practice to give the faithful a sense of sacred transcendence. -- Karen Armstrong
By increasing the amount of Torah (obligatory religious laws) in the world, they were extending His presence in the world and making it more effective. -- Karen Armstrong
But was the prototype of human existence; it was the original pattern or the archetype on which our life here below had been modeled. -- Karen Armstrong
We should probably all pause to confront our past from time to time, because it changes its meaning as our circumstances alter. -- Karen Armstrong
I have nothing maternal in me, and men want to be mothered a lot of the time. -- Karen Armstrong
I tremble for our world, where, in the smallest of ways, we find it impossible ... to find room for the other in our minds. If we cannot accommodate a viewpoint in a friend without resorting to unkindness, how can we hope to heal the terrible problems of our planet? -- Karen Armstrong
When violence becomes imbedded in a region, then this affects everything. It affects your dreams, your fantasies and relationships, and your religion becomes violent, too. -- Karen Armstrong
It's a great event to get outside and enjoy nature. I find it very exciting no matter how many times I see bald eagles. -- Karen Armstrong
Fundamentalists are not friends of democracy. And that includes your fundamentalists in the United States. -- Karen Armstrong
I believe in holiness and sacredness in other people. It doesn't mean that the clouds part and I see God. That's a juvenile way of thinking about it. -- Karen Armstrong
We are meaning-seeking creatures. -- Karen Armstrong
From the Muslims I learned from the extraordinary pluralism of the Koran, the fact that the Koran endorses every single one of the major world faiths, but I was particularly enthralled by the Sufi tradition, the mystical tradition of Islam, which is so open to other religious faiths. -- Karen Armstrong
Oedipus had to abandon his certainty, his clarity, and supposed insight in order to become aware of the dark ambiguity of the human condition. -- Karen Armstrong
The values of Islam are expressed by Muslims clearly. September 11 changed the world, and put Muslims on the spotlight. -- Karen Armstrong
Muhammad preached his farewell sermon to the Muslim community. He reminded them to deal justly with one another, to treat women kindly, and to abandon the blood feuds and vendettas inspired by the spirit of jahiliyyah. Muslim must never fight against Muslim. -- Karen Armstrong
I was a lousy nun. I couldn't do it. I couldn't find God. It wasn't suitable for me. It is suitable for very few people. -- Karen Armstrong
Yet my study of the history of religion has revealed that human beings are spiritual animals. Indeed, there is a case for arguing that Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus -- Karen Armstrong
I had failed to make a gift of myself to God. -- Karen Armstrong
Mythology is usually inseparable from ritual. -- Karen Armstrong
We should also make ourselves aware that our cultural, ethical, religious, and intellectual traditions have all been profoundly affected by other peoples'. -- Karen Armstrong
Remember that in a threatening environment, the human brain becomes permanently organized for aggression. -- Karen Armstrong
The new Sufi tariqahs founded at this time stressed the unlimited potential of human life. Sufis could experience on the
spiritual plane what the Mongols had so nearly achieved in terrestrial politics -- Karen Armstrong
We have developed a more logical and discursive mode of thought. Instead of looking at a physical phenomena imaginatively, we strip an object of all its emotive associations and concentrate on the thing itself. -- Karen Armstrong
Religion is a practical discipline and in the 17th century in the West, we turned it onto a head trip. But it's like dancing, or swimming, or driving, which you can't learn by texts. You have to get into the car and learn how to manipulate the vehicle. -- Karen Armstrong
Compassion is not a popular virtue. -- Karen Armstrong
People would continue to adopt a particular conception of the divine because it worked for them, not because it was scientifically or philosophically sound. -- Karen Armstrong
Each of the world religions has its own particular genius, its own special insight into the nature and requirements of compassion, and has something unique to teach us. -- Karen Armstrong
Human beings have always been mythmakers. -- Karen Armstrong
Petty theft, murder, forgery, arson, and the abduction of women were all capital offenses, so the death penalty for heresy was neither unusual nor extreme.50 -- Karen Armstrong
Compassion has dropped so far out of sight these days that many are confused about what is required. It even inspires overt hostility. -- Karen Armstrong
Even our contemporary cult of celebrity can be understood as an expression of our reverence for and yearning to emulate models of "superhumanity." Feeling ourselves connected to such extraordinary -- Karen Armstrong
There are some forms of religion that are bad, just as there's bad cooking or bad art or bad sex, you have bad religion too. -- Karen Armstrong
My study of religion, which I regard in many ways as an art form, is a search for meaning. -- Karen Armstrong
Buddhists talk about nirvana in very much the same terms as monotheists describe God. -- Karen Armstrong
Surely it's better to love others, however messy and imperfect the involvement, than to allow one's capacity for love to harden. -- Karen Armstrong
Now I think one of the reasons why religion developed in the way that it did over the centuries was precisely to curb this murderous bent that we have as human beings. -- Karen Armstrong
inhabitants of countries that were colonized by the Europeans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries knew how profoundly distressing it was to watch a cherished way of life disappearing and beloved traditions decried by powerful, disdainful foreigners. -- Karen Armstrong
We are trying to retrain our responses and form mental habits that are kinder, gentler, and less fearful of others. -- Karen Armstrong
A myth, therefore, is true because it is effective, not because it gives us factual information. If, however, it does not give us new insight into the deeper meaning of life, it has failed. -- Karen Armstrong
Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else. -- Karen Armstrong
In your mindfulness practice, notice how often, without thinking, you try to manipulate, control, or exploit others - sometimes in tiny and apparently unimportant ways. -- Karen Armstrong
The Roman clergy thus adopted the old aristocracy's ideal of libertas, which had little to do with freedom; rather, it referred to the maintenance of the privileged position of the ruling class, lest society lapse into barbarism. -- Karen Armstrong
Beethoven's string quartets express pain itself; it is not MY pain. -- Karen Armstrong
Alas, all traditions lose their primal purity and we all fail our founders. -- Karen Armstrong
There is a distinction between belief in a set of propositions and a faith which enables us to put our trust in them. -- Karen Armstrong
Each generation has to create the image of God that works for it. -- Karen Armstrong
Geniuses are not always pleasant people. -- Karen Armstrong
Storytelling is fine as long as you can encourage people to act on the stories. -- Karen Armstrong
People who have been taught to despise themselves cannot easily respect others. -- Karen Armstrong
For centuries, the Muslims were able to co-exist perfectly well with Jews and Christians in the Middle East. -- Karen Armstrong
The only way to show a true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God's existence. -- Karen Armstrong
Compassion is not an option. It's the key to our survival. -- Karen Armstrong
There is nothing in Islam that is more violent than Christianity. -- Karen Armstrong
It is not difficult to find a religious justification for killing. -- Karen Armstrong