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
Each of the world religions has its own particular genius, its own special insight into the nature and requirements of compassion, and… — 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
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
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
“In the tenth century BC, the priests of India devised the Brahmodya competition, which would become a model of authentic theological discourse.… — 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
From the Muslims I learned from the extraordinary pluralism of the Koran, the fact that the Koran endorses every single one of… — 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
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
Religion is not a nice thing. It is potentially a very dangerous thing because it involves a heady complex of emotions, desires,… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“the moral and spiritual imperatives of religion are important for humanity and should not be relegated unthinkingly to the scrap heap of… — 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
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
“For Dawkins, atheism is a necessary consequence of evolution. He has argued that the religious impulse is simply an evolutionary mistake, a… — 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
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
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
It is not difficult to find a religious justification for killing. — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“In [the] early days, Muslims did not see Islam as a new, exclusive religion but as a continuation of the primordial faith… — 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
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
“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
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
