Quotessence
Home / Authors / Karen Armstrong
Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllCompassionWorldPeopleHumansIfsWayReligiousMindIslamReligion

Famous Karen Armstrong Quotes

“We are opinionated society. We're very happy to spout forth our own views; we're not good about listening. We have to listen to other's stories. Learn to listen to the stories of the terrorists just as we hope that they will listen to ours because very often these narratives express frustrations, fears, and anxieties that most societies can safely ignore.”

StoriesViewsListeningAnxietyTerroristNarrativeFrustrationVery HappyOpinionated
Author:Karen Armstrong
Create image

“I want to create a rapid response team, right around the world, perhaps starting originally with our partners, similar to the one we have in the United Nations whereby, where there's a problem in our society which demands a compassionate response, an educated, informed, not just a splurgy emotional thing, but an informed compassionate response that puts yourself in the position of the other and sees all sides of the problem, not just your own, there'll be somebody poised in each society who can write to the media, write an op-ed piece, to go on TV or radio.”

WorldWantWritingProblemNationsSidesUnitedPiecesTeamMediaPositionEmotionalTvsGoes OnDemandResponseStartingRadioPartnersEducatedAround The WorldOur SocietyCompassionateUnited NationsRapidsEmotional Things
Author:Karen Armstrong
Create image

“People knew there were two ways of coming at truth. One was science, or what the Greeks called Logos, reason, logic. And that was essential that the discourse of science or logic related directed to the external world. The other was mythos, what the Greeks called myth, which didn't mean a fantasy story, but it was a narrative associated with ritual and ethical practice but it helped us to address problems for which there were no easy answers, like mortality, cruelty, the sorrow that overtakes us all that's part of the human condition. And these two were not in opposition, we needed both.”

PeopleWorldWayHumansMeanTwoReasonStoriesProblemEasyAnswersPracticeFantasyConditionsNeededSorrowEssentialsLogicMythCrueltyNarrativeGreekRelatedAddressesOppositionMortalityEthicalRitualHuman ConditionDiscourseTwo WaysLogosEasy AnswersFantasy Stories
Author:Karen Armstrong
Create image

“A science can diagnose a cancer and can even find a cure for it, but it can't, and a scientist will be the first to say, it's can't help you to deal with the stress and disappointment and terror that comes with a diagnosis, and nor can it help you to die well, like Socrates, kindly, not railing against faith, but in possession of your own death. For these imponderable questions people have turned to mythos.”

PeopleFirstsWellsHelpingDiesDealsScientistStressCancerTerrorDisappointmentPossessionCuresDiagnosis
Author:Karen Armstrong
Create image

“Important thing about myth is that it's not just something that you believe, a myth is essentially a program for action. And unless you translate a mythical story, or a doctrine out of the church, into practical action, it just remains incomprehensible. Rather like the rules of a board game which seem very sort of dull and complicated and incomprehensible until you pick up the dice and start to play, when everything falls into place.”

BelieveImportantPlayStoriesSeemsActionFallGamesChurchPicksProgramRemainsImportant ThingsComplicatedMythPracticalsDoctrineBoardsDullTranslateDiceFall Into PlaceBoard GamesEverything Falls Into Place
Author:Karen Armstrong
Create 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 the emotions of terror and pity that amounted to an experience of rebirth.”

PeopleFactsCertainEmotionMysteryTheoryTragedyTerrorVariousPityDispositionRebirthInitiatePurificationLiterary Theory
Author:Karen Armstrong
Create image

“If we try to hold on to our partial glimpses of the divine, we cut it down to our own size and close our minds. Like it or nor, our human experience of anything or anybody is always incomplete: there is usually something that eludes us, some portion of experience that evades our grasp.”

IfsTryingMindHumansCuttingDivineSizePortionsGlimpseHuman ExperienceIncompleteEludeElude Us
Book:The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness
Create 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 Golden Rule. This is what drives my writing. I want to point out this interconnectedness, point out the beauty of the faith in all traditions without exception, show the complexity of the atrocities that we have experienced, and our shared culpability as a species.”

WorldWayWantWritingShowsStudyAchieveSafeTraditionSpeciesConvincedGoldenComplexityExceptionLive ByAtrocitiesGolden RuleInterconnectednessCulpability
Author:Karen Armstrong
Create image

“It is people who are violent, rather than "religions"; and since we secularised our politics we have had two major world wars, the Holocaust, the Soviet Gulag, and the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - none of which were inspired by religion. If we want to understand the dangers of our world, we can no longer accept the old received ideas.”

PeopleIfsWorldWantTwoIdeasWarAcceptingDangerMajorsInspiredViolentWar Of The WorldsOur WorldSovietHolocaustHiroshimaHiroshima And NagasakiGulags
Author:Karen Armstrong
Create image

“A God who kept tinkering with the universe was absurd; a God who interfered with human freedom and creativity was a tyrant. If God is seen as a self in a world of his own, an ego that relates to a thought, a cause separate from its effect, he becomes a being, not Being itself. An omnipotent, all‐knowing tyrant is not so different from earthly dictators who make everything and everybody mere cogs in the machine which they controlled. An atheism that rejects such a God is amply justified.”

IfsWorldHumansDifferentSelfUniverseCausesCreativityKnowingAtheismEffectsEgoMachinesMereAtheistAbsurdRelateRejectsControlledTyrantsDictatorAgnosticJustifiedOmnipotentHuman FreedomThere Being No GodCogsTinkering
Author:Karen Armstrong
Create image

“Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, of self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself. They do not do this because it sounds edifying, but because this is the way that human nature seems to work. We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transcend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind.”

WayHumansKindSelfShowsSeemsFoundSoundBehindsCreativeHuman NaturePossibilityTypeOrdinaryMythAll KindsTheologianGreat Faith
Book:The Spiral Staircase
Create image

“After a time I found that I could almost listen to the silence, which had a dimension all of its own. I started to attend to its strange and beautiful texture, which of course, it was impossible to express in words. I discovered that I felt at home and alive in the silence, which compelled me to enter my interior world and around there. Without the distraction of constant conversation, the words on the page began to speak directly to my inner self. They were no long expressing ideas that were simply interesting intellectually, but were talking directly to my own yearning and perplexity.”

WorldLongIdeasSelfHomeBeautifulCoursesFoundSpeakFeltMy OwnInterestingSilenceTalkingAliveImpossibleStrangeConversationPagesConstantDimensionsDistractionYearningInteriorsCompelledInner SelfTexturePerplexityExpressing Ideas
Author:Karen Armstrong
Create image

“The constant reprimands made me hyperconscious of my own performance, and so instead of getting rid of self, I had become embedded in the egoism I was supposed to transcend. Now I was beginning to understand that a silence that is not clamorous with vexation and worried self-regard can become part of the texture of your mind, can seep into you, moment by moment, and gradually change you.”

MindMadeSelfMomentsMy OwnSilencePerformancesRegardConstantWorriedTextureEgoismEmbeddedVexation
Author:Karen Armstrong
Create image

“If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology.”

IfsLoveMadeSelfGodReligionNamesUnderstandingDifferencesCompassionKindnessDivineEmpathyNotionKillingTheologySympathyRighteousConcreteUnkindKinderSelf RighteousLoving KindnessEmpatheticUnkindnessBelligerence
Book:The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness
Create image

“Even though the discples were not aware of it, the presence was with them while they were reviewing the scriptures together on the road. Henceforth, we will catch only a fleeting glimpse of it -- in the study of sacred writings, in other human beings, in liturgy, and in communion with strangers. But these moments remain us that our fellow men and women are themselves sacred; there is something about them taht is worthy of absolute reverence, is in the last resort mysterious, and we will always elude us.”

MenWritingHumansMomentsTogetherLastsHuman BeingsStudyMen And WomenAbsolutesFellowsSacredStrangerWorthyScriptureMysteriousReverenceCommunionGlimpseFleetingResortsFellow ManEludeLiturgyElude Us
Author:Karen Armstrong
Create image