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
“included: no religious doctrine or practice can be authentic if it does not lead to practical compassion.” — 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
“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
I am not interested in the afterlife. Religion is supposed to be about losing your ego, not preserving it eternally in optimum… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Here in America, religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. They've lost the Axial Age vision of concern for… — 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
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
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
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
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
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
“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
It is people who are violent, rather than "religions"; and since we secularised our politics we have had two major world wars,… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Religious ideas and practices take root not because they are promoted by forceful theologians, nor because they can be shown to have… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
I never intended to be a historian of religion. My aim was to become a professor of English Literature in a university,… — 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
“A disorderly spirituality that makes the practitioner dreamy, eccentric, or uncontrolled is a very bad sign indeed. In” — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“By increasing the amount of Torah (obligatory religious laws) in the world, they were extending His presence in the world and making… — 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
“Fundamentalist faith was rooted in deep fear and anxiety that could not be assuaged by a purely rational argument.” — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“At their best, all religious, philosophical, and ethical traditions are based on the principle of compassion. I” — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Religion isn’t about believing things. It's ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of… — 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
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
“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
When violence becomes imbedded in a region, then this affects everything. It affects your dreams, your fantasies and relationships, and your religion… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
We can't say what God is, and until the modern period, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians in the three God religions all… — 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
“If professional religious leaders cannot instruct us in mythological lore, our artists and creative writers can perhaps step into this priestly role… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Golden Rule lies at the heart of every religious and of every ethical system of morality, it what makes us look at… — 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
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
The early doctrines of the church, even doctrines like Trinity and Incarnation were originally also calls for action, calls for selflessness, calls… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“people are finding that in their dramatically transformed circumstances, the old forms of faith no longer work for them: they cannot provide… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
Religion is a practical discipline and in the 17th century in the West, we turned it onto a head trip. But it's… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share Image
“Disputes that were secular in origin, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, have been allowed to fester and become “holy,” and once they… — 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
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
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
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
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
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
The great task of our time is to build a global society, where people can live together in peace — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
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
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
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
“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
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
“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
Each of the world religions has its own particular genius, its own special insight into the nature and requirements of compassion, and has something… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
“all rightly guided religion that submitted wholly to God, refused to worship man-made deities and preached that justice and equality came from the same… — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
“advocates of evolutionary theory since Thomas H. Huxley (1825–95) have found altruism problematic.” — Karen Armstrong Copy Share
