Karen Armstrong

You are your best self when you give yourself away.

— Karen Armstrong

Beethoven's string quartets express pain itself; it is not MY pain.

— Karen Armstrong

Human beings have always been mythmakers.

— Karen Armstrong

I had failed to make a gift of myself to God.

— Karen Armstrong

Religion starts with the perception that something is wrong.

— Karen Armstrong

There is nothing in Islam that is more violent than Christianity.

— Karen Armstrong

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

— Karen Armstrong

“so Enki tells Atrahasis to build a boat, instructing him about”

— Karen Armstrong

If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void.

— Karen Armstrong

The great task of our time is to build a global society, where people can live together in peace

— Karen Armstrong

I have a very sharp tongue, I'm very impatient, and it's a lifelong struggle.

— Karen Armstrong

“if we harm our neighbors, we also inflict damage on ourselves. There”

— Karen Armstrong

Respect only has meaning as respect for those with whom I do not agree.

— Karen Armstrong

Compassion is the key in Islam and Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity. They are profoundly similar.

— Karen Armstrong

“Our Master’s Way,” explained one of his pupils, “is nothing but this: doing-your-best-for-others (zhong) and consideration (shu).”3”

— 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

“the sacred reality is not simply transcendent, “out there,” but is enshrined in every single human being, who must, therefore, be treated…

— Karen Armstrong

“With this new empathetic understanding of the context, we will find that we can imagine ourselves, in similar circumstances, feeling the same.”

— 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

I am continually trying to find meaning in the world. If we cannot find some ultimate significance or value in our lives,…

— Karen Armstrong

Mohammed was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success, politically as well as spiritually, and Islam went from strength to…

— Karen Armstrong

“In fact, the causes of conflict are usually greed, envy, and ambition, but in an effort to sanitize them, these self-serving emotions…

— Karen Armstrong

“Auschwitz was a dark epiphany, providing us with a terrible vision of what life is like when all sense of the sacred…

— 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

From the Rabbis of the early Talmudic age I learned that there is never a last word on God. There's, you always…

— Karen Armstrong

“It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak…

— Karen Armstrong

“You cannot be a hero unless you are prepared to give up everything; there is no ascent to the heights without a…

— Karen Armstrong

Huge imbalance in power has resulted in the alienation, rage, fury, and awful amoral terrorism that has erupted and is erupting at…

— 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

We are opinionated society. We're very happy to spout forth our own views; we're not good about listening. We have to listen…

— Karen Armstrong

“we have come to depend on the instant rush of energy and delight we feel when we display our cleverness by making…

— Karen Armstrong

You have to get into the water and learn against what seems to be the law gravity to float and dancing, or…

— Karen Armstrong

“Quraysh, who had shown throughout the day that they were still in thrall to the overbearing haughtiness and intransigence of the jahiliyyah,…

— 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

“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

“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

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

— Karen Armstrong

“We have seen that a myth could never approached in a purely profane setting. It was only comprehensible in a liturgical context…

— Karen Armstrong