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Karen Armstrong

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Famous Karen Armstrong Quotes

“I tremble for our world, where, in the smallest ways, we find it impossible, as Marshall Hodgson enjoined, to find room for the other in our minds. If we cannot accommodate a viewpoint in a friend without resorting to unkindness, how can we hope to heal the terrible problems of our planet? I no longer think that any principle or opinion is worth anything if it makes you unkind or intolerant.”

IfsThinkingWorldWayMindProblemRoomsOpinionPrinciplesImpossiblePlanetsTerribleHealOur WorldSmallestOur PlanetViewpointsAccommodateUnkindUnkindness
Book:The Spiral Staircase
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“Religions have found that if you behave in a certain way, if you sort of perform certain rituals that expand your mind and make you realize that will make you realize and help you to seguey into transcendence and perform certain acts, adopt a certain lifestyle, you develop new capacities of mind and heart, just like the dancer, or the athlete that make you into a whole human being and principle after one of these disciplines right across the board in all of the faiths is compassion, the ability to feel with the other person.”

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Author:Karen Armstrong
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“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.”

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Book:The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness
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“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
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“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
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“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
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“Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they they conform to some metaphysical, scientific or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice.”

IfsWayLifeHumansRealityTruthLawCertainReligionChangeAcceptingMoralPracticeImpossibleHuman NatureAcceptanceEthicsDiscoveryFunctionTwentiesTransformationHistoricalMythDoctrineBehaveBreakfastEthicalAestheticTransformedConformPropositionsMetaphysicalAestheticsAlchemyFamous WomenSelf TransformationSpiritual TransformationEnhancement
Author:Karen Armstrong
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“Theology is-- or should be-- a species of poetry,which read quickly or encountered in a hubbub of noise makes no sense. You have to open yourself to a poem with a quiet, receptive mind, in the same way you might listen to a difficult piece of music... If you seize upon a poem and try to extort its meaning before you are ready, it remains opaque. If you bring your own personal agenda to bear upon it, the poem will close upon itself like a clam, because you have denied its unique and separate identity, its inviolate holiness.”

IfsWayShouldTryingMindMightDifficultPiecesIdentityReadyBearsQuietUniqueRemainsSpeciesTheologyNoiseHolinessAgendasDeniedReceptiveOpaqueClams
Author:Karen Armstrong
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“If it is written and read with serious attention, a novel, like a myth or any great work of art, can become an initiation that helps us to make a painful rite of passage from one phase of life, one state of mind, to another. A novel, like a myth, teaches us to see the world differently; it shows us how to look into our own hearts and to see our world from a perspective that goes beyond our own self-interest.”

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Author:Karen Armstrong
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“He was decisive and wholehearted in everything he did, so intent on the task at hand that he never looked over his shoulder, even if his cloak got caught in a thorny bush. When he did turn to speak to somebody, he used to swing his entire body and address him full face. When he shook hands, he was never the first to withdraw his own. He inspired such confidence that he was known as al-Amin, the Reliable One.”

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Author:Karen Armstrong
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