If it is written and read with serious attention, a novel, like a myth or any great work of art, can become… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“What do you think Socrates meant when he said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”? Third,” — 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
Far from being the father of jihad, [Prophet] Mohammad was a peacemaker, who risked his life and nearly lost the loyalty of… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
A mode of knowledge rooted in silence and intuitive insight which gives meaning to life but which cannot be explained in rational… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“Everything that goes up must come down: that is a law of life, so to strengthen your enemy by yielding to him… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Often when religious leaders come together, they talk about a particular sexual ethic, or an abstruse doctrine, as though this, rather than… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
I'm seeking to make sense of life, looking for its meaning and how we can have a better humanity. — 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
Today we often think that before we start living a religious life we have first to accept the creedal doctrines and that… — 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
Some people simply bury their heads in the sand and refuse to think about the sorrow of the world, but this is… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“Perhaps the central paradox of the religious life is that it seeks transcendence, a dimension of existence that goes beyond our mundane… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“if they did not interrogate their most fundamental beliefs, they would live superficial, expedient lives, because “the unexamined life is not worth… — 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
“...a novel, like a myth or any great work of art, can become an initiation that helps us to make a painful… — 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
“The only way to show a true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God’s existence.” ― A History of… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“inhabitants of countries that were colonized by the Europeans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries knew how profoundly distressing it was to… — 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
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 Copy Share Image
“Quraysh, who had shown throughout the day that they were still in thrall to the overbearing haughtiness and intransigence of the jahiliyyah,… — 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
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
“We are meaning-seeking creatures. Dogs, as far as we know, do not agonise about the canine condition, worry about the plight of… — 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