My study of religion, which I regard in many ways as an art form, is a search for meaning. — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“We shall often find in our story that the religious behavior of people who have not been major beneficiaries of modernity articulates… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
All religions are designed to teach us how to live, joyfully, serenely, and kindly, in the midst of suffering. — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“Again, what works well in the spiritual domain can become destructive and even immoral if interpreted literally and practically in the mundane… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“Fundamentalist faith was rooted in deep fear and anxiety that could not be assuaged by a purely rational argument.” — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“A disorderly spirituality that makes the practitioner dreamy, eccentric, or uncontrolled is a very bad sign indeed. In” — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“By increasing the amount of Torah (obligatory religious laws) in the world, they were extending His presence in the world and making… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Eventually, with regret, I left the religious life, and, once freed of the burden of failure and inadequacy, I felt my belief… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Zionism was originally a rebellion against religious Judaism and the PLO Charter was essentially secularist. But because the conflict was allowed to… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Illness itself can make you angry, enraged, furious, and it made me angry, enraged, and furious. I don't think it brought me… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Religion is a practical discipline and in the 17th century in the West, we turned it onto a head trip. But it's… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“Disputes that were secular in origin, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, have been allowed to fester and become “holy,” and once they… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“people are finding that in their dramatically transformed circumstances, the old forms of faith no longer work for them: they cannot provide… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“We can either emphasize those aspects of our traditions, religious or secular, that speak of hatred, exclusion, and suspicion or work with… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic,… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
I never intended to be a historian of religion. My aim was to become a professor of English Literature in a university,… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
When violence becomes imbedded in a region, then this affects everything. It affects your dreams, your fantasies and relationships, and your religion… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“Then, as now, there would always be people who preferred the option of devoting their religious energies to sacred space over the… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
There are some forms of religion that are bad, just as there's bad cooking or bad art or bad sex, you have… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
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… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“At their best, all religious, philosophical, and ethical traditions are based on the principle of compassion. I” — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Every fundamentalist movement I've studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced at some gut, visceral level that secular liberal society wants… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
I am not interested in the afterlife. Religion is supposed to be about losing your ego, not preserving it eternally in optimum… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Here in America, religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. They've lost the Axial Age vision of concern for… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Now I think one of the reasons why religion developed in the way that it did over the centuries was precisely to… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Islam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Like art, religion is an imaginative and creative effort to find a meaning and value in human life. — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Religions have always stressed that compassion is not only central to religious life, it is the key to enlightenment and it the… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“The Socratic dialogue was a spiritual exercise designed to produce a profound psychological change in the participants, and because its purpose was… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
The early doctrines of the church, even doctrines like Trinity and Incarnation were originally also calls for action, calls for selflessness, calls… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
And so, one of the reasons why I started my Charter for Compassion, was to bring the Golden Rule back to the… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Every single one of the major world faiths, whether we're talking about Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Darwinism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have all… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness,… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“One of the chief tasks of our time must surely be to build a global community in which all peoples can live… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
After I left the convent, for 15 years I was worn out with religion, I wanted nothing whatever to do with it.… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“all rightly guided religion that submitted wholly to God, refused to worship man-made deities and preached that justice and equality came from… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
We can't say what God is, and until the modern period, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians in the three God religions all… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“If professional religious leaders cannot instruct us in mythological lore, our artists and creative writers can perhaps step into this priestly role… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
If it is written and read with serious attention, a novel, like a myth or any great work of art, can become an initiation… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
A gentleman is not born but crafted. He had to work on himself in the same way as a sculptor shaped a rough stone… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
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… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
I have become convinced, through my studies, that the only way to achieve a safe, just and viable world is to live by the… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
In the past some of the most influential Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians, such as Maimonides, Aquinas and Ibn Sina, made it clear that… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
The great task of our time is to build a global society, where people can live together in peace — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
We want to create, never mind the leaders or the bishops or chief rabbis or imams, or Popes. We want to create a grassroots… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
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… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
After I left the convent, for 15 years I was worn out with religion, I wanted nothing whatever to do with it. I felt… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
“As we have seen, so many of the things we once took for granted have proved unreliable that we may have to “forget” old… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
Yet a personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
“I discovered that I felt at home and alive in the silence, which compelled me to enter my interior world and around there. Without… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
Each of the world religions has its own particular genius, its own special insight into the nature and requirements of compassion, and has something… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
“all rightly guided religion that submitted wholly to God, refused to worship man-made deities and preached that justice and equality came from the same… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
“advocates of evolutionary theory since Thomas H. Huxley (1825–95) have found altruism problematic.” — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
