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 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
“included: no religious doctrine or practice can be authentic if it does not lead to practical compassion.” — 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
“Understanding different national, cultural, and religious traditions is no longer a luxury; it is now a necessity and must become a priority.… — 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
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
“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
Religion is hard work. Its insights are not self-evident and have to be cultivated in the same way as an appreciation of… — 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
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
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
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
Saint Augustine ... insisted that scripture taught nothing but charity. Whatever the biblical author may have intended, any passage that seemed to… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
And sometimes it's the very otherness of a stranger, someone who doesn't belong to our ethnic or ideological or religious group, an… — 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
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
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
He [Aristotle] pointed out that people who had become initiates in the various mystery religions were not required to learn any facts… — 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
Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of… — 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
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
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
The awful atrocities of religion happened when people assume that God shares your likes and dislikes. The Crusaders when into battle to… — 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
“Religious discourse was not intended to be understood literally because it was only possible to speak about a reality that transcended language… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“Jesus himself remains an enigma. There have been interesting attempts to uncover the figure of the ‘historical’ Jesus, a project that has… — 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
“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
“This was the scientific age, and people wanted to believe that their traditions were in line with the new era, but this… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“The Deuteronomists had made violence an option in the Judeo-Christian religion. It would always be possible to make these scriptures endorse intolerant… — 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
“Fundamentalist faith was rooted in deep fear and anxiety that could not be assuaged by a purely rational argument.” — 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
“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
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
![“He [Aristotle] pointed out that people who had become initiates in the various mystery religions were not required to learn any facts 'but to experience certain emotions and to be put in a certain disposition.' Hence his famous literary theory that tragedy effected a purification (katharsis) of…” quote by Karen Armstrong](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/760/karen-armstrong-1053_certain_he-aristotle-pointed-out-that-people-who_2634594.jpg)
![“In [the] early days, Muslims did not see Islam as a new, exclusive religion but as a continuation of the primordial faith of the ‘People of the Book’, the Jews and Christians. In one remarkable passage, God insists that Muslims must accept indiscriminately the revelations of every single one of…” quote by Karen Armstrong](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/e49/karen-armstrong-1053_christianity_in-the-early-days-muslims-did-not-see-is_828158.jpg)
