Religion Quotes by Karen Armstrong

It is not difficult to find a religious justification for killing.

— Karen Armstrong

Religion starts with the perception that something is wrong.

— Karen Armstrong

I used to hate religion, I loathed it in my angry days.

— Karen Armstrong

“People worship different things; there must be 'no coercion in matters of faith!”

— Karen Armstrong

There must be no coercion in matters of faith!

— Karen Armstrong

Religions don't own compassion; it is a human virtue.

— Karen Armstrong

“There was a growing conviction that religion had to become as rational as modern science.”

— Karen Armstrong

“Any interpretation of scripture that bred hatred or disdain for others was illegitimate,”

— Karen Armstrong

Religion is not a nice thing. It is potentially a very dangerous thing because it involves a heady complex of emotions, desires,…

— Karen Armstrong

“included: no religious doctrine or practice can be authentic if it does not lead to practical compassion.”

— Karen Armstrong

Often when religious leaders come together, they talk about a particular sexual ethic, or an abstruse doctrine, as though this, rather than…

— Karen Armstrong

“Understanding different national, cultural, and religious traditions is no longer a luxury; it is now a necessity and must become a priority.…

— Karen Armstrong

Each of the world religions has its own particular genius, its own special insight into the nature and requirements of compassion, and…

— Karen Armstrong

Sometimes I call myself a freelance, I can't see any one of the great religions as superior to others.

— 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…

— 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…

— Karen Armstrong

From the Muslims I learned from the extraordinary pluralism of the Koran, the fact that the Koran endorses every single one of…

— Karen Armstrong

Today we often think that before we start living a religious life we have first to accept the creedal doctrines and that…

— Karen Armstrong

Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion…

— Karen Armstrong

Religion is a practical discipline and it's one that we have always done, ever since humanity appeared on the scene when Homo…

— 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…

— Karen Armstrong

Saint Augustine ... insisted that scripture taught nothing but charity. Whatever the biblical author may have intended, any passage that seemed to…

— Karen Armstrong

“the moral and spiritual imperatives of religion are important for humanity and should not be relegated unthinkingly to the scrap heap of…

— Karen Armstrong

If professional religious leaders can [no longer] instruct..., our artists and creative writers can perhaps step into this priestly role and bring…

— Karen Armstrong

Religions have found that if you behave in a certain way, if you sort of perform certain rituals that expand your mind…

— Karen Armstrong

He [Aristotle] pointed out that people who had become initiates in the various mystery religions were not required to learn any facts…

— Karen Armstrong

Western liberal humanism is not something that comes naturally to us: like an appreciation of art or poetry, it has to be…

— Karen Armstrong

Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic,…

— Karen Armstrong

Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of…

— Karen Armstrong

Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, of self-emptying, is…

— Karen Armstrong

Islam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying…

— Karen Armstrong

The awful atrocities of religion happened when people assume that God shares your likes and dislikes. The Crusaders when into battle to…

— Karen Armstrong

“...the experience of reading a novel has certain qualities that remind us of the traditional apprehension of mythology. It can be seen…

— Karen Armstrong

“The new atheists show a disturbing lack of understanding of or concern about the complexity and ambiguity of modern experience, and their…

— Karen Armstrong

“For Dawkins, atheism is a necessary consequence of evolution. He has argued that the religious impulse is simply an evolutionary mistake, a…

— Karen Armstrong

“Religious discourse was not intended to be understood literally because it was only possible to speak about a reality that transcended language…

— Karen Armstrong

“Jesus himself remains an enigma. There have been interesting attempts to uncover the figure of the ‘historical’ Jesus, a project that has…

— Karen Armstrong

“In [the] early days, Muslims did not see Islam as a new, exclusive religion but as a continuation of the primordial faith…

— Karen Armstrong

“In the tenth century BC, the priests of India devised the Brahmodya competition, which would become a model of authentic theological discourse.…

— Karen Armstrong

“This was the scientific age, and people wanted to believe that their traditions were in line with the new era, but this…

— Karen Armstrong