Quotessence
Home / Authors / Karen Armstrong
Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllCompassionWorldPeopleHumansIfsWayReligiousMindIslamReligionChristianGivingThinkingMadeMythSelfIdeasRealityWantHuman Beings

Famous Karen Armstrong Quotes

“Today we often think that before we start living a religious life we have first to accept the creedal doctrines and that before one can have any comprehension of the loyalty and trust of faith, one must first force one's mind to accept a host of incomprehensible doctrines. But this is to put the cart before the horse.”

ThinkingMindFirstsTodayForceReligiousAcceptingHorseLoyaltyDoctrineHostComprehensionCartsReligious LifeTrust And Loyalty
Author:Karen Armstrong
Create image

“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
Create image

“Myth was regarded as primary; it was concerned with what was thought to be timeless and constant in our existence. Myth looked back to the origins of life, to the foundations of culture, and to the deepest levels of the human mind. Myth was not concerned with practical matters, but with meaning. Unless we find some significance in our lives, we mortal men and women fall very easily into despair. The mythos of a society provided people with a context that made sense of their day-to-day lives; it directed their attention to the eternal and the universal.”

PeopleMenMindHumansMadeMatterFallCultureLevelsExistenceAttentionOur LivesAtheismDespairEternalMen And WomenConcernedUniversalFoundationConstantPositive AtheismMythPracticalsMortalsPrimariesSignificanceHuman MindTimelessDay To DayDay LifeOrigin Of LifeDay To Day Life
Book:The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism
Create image

“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.”

IfsWayFeelsMindHumansHeartPersonsWholeHelpingCertainFoundRealizingHuman BeingsAbilityCompassionPrinciplesDisciplineCapacityAthleteLifestyleBehaveBoardsDancerRitualHeart And MindTranscendence
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

“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

“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
Create 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 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.”

IfsWorldMindLooksHeartArtSelfStatesHelpingShowsInterestAttentionTeachNovelWrittenSeriousPerspectivePainfulMythWorks Of ArtOur WorldState Of MindPassagesPhasesGreat WorkSelf InterestRiteInitiationRite Of PassagePhases Of Life
Author:Karen Armstrong
Create image

“Western liberal humanism is not something that comes naturally to us: like an appreciation of art or poetry, it has to be cultivated. Humanism is itself a religion without God-not all religions, of course, are theistic. Our ethical secular ideal has it's own disciplines of mind and heart and gives people the means of finding faith in the ultimate meaning of human life that were once provided by the more conventional religions.”

PeopleGivingMindHumansHeartMeanArtCoursesCompassionDisciplineFindingsEthicsIdealsUltimateWesternHumanismAppreciationHuman LifeEthicalConventionalSecularHeart And MindWithout God
Author:Karen Armstrong
Create image