If we try to hold on to our partial glimpses of the divine, we cut it down to our own size and… — 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
Religions have found that if you behave in a certain way, if you sort of perform certain rituals that expand your mind… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Whatever conclusions we reach about the reality of God, the history of this idea must tell us something important about the human… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Myth was regarded as primary; it was concerned with what was thought to be timeless and constant in our existence. Myth looked… — 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
Even though the discples were not aware of it, the presence was with them while they were reviewing the scriptures together on… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
God [is] not the exclusive property of any one tradition. The divine light [cannot] be confined to a single lamp, belonging to… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
People knew there were two ways of coming at truth. One was science, or what the Greeks called Logos, reason, logic. And… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was a tyrant.… — 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
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 Copy Share Image
But human beings fall easily into despair, and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place our lives… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
I left the convent and that was because I wasn't a very good nun. I could see that I wasn't going to… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Pain is something that's common to human life. When we ignore it, we aren't engaging in the whole reality, and the pain… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
There is a danger in monotheism, and it's called idolatry. And we know the prophets of Israel were very, very concerned about… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Western liberal humanism is not something that comes naturally to us: like an appreciation of art or poetry, it has to be… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Alexander's achievement was not the conquest of India, but the feat of actually getting there and his two years in India were… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Deeds that seemed unimportant at the time would prove to have been momentous; a tiny act of selfishness and unkindness or, conversely,… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Mythology and science both extend the scope of human beings. Like science and technology, mythology, as we shall see, is not about… — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
The great task of our time is to build a global society, where people can live together in peace — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image