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Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong Quotes

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Karen Armstrong, born on November 14, 1944, is a renowned author and religious scholar. Her works cover a range of fields including religious history, philosophy, and ethics, and are praised for their insightful and accessible writing style as well as her respect for religious diversity.

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All Compassion World People Humans Ifs Way Religious Mind Islam Religion Christian Giving Thinking Made Myth Self Ideas Reality Want Human Beings

Famous Karen Armstrong Quotes

“Eventually, with regret, I left the religious life, and, once freed of the burden of failure and inadequacy, I felt my belief in God slip quietly away. He had never really impinged upon my life, though I had done my best to enable him to do so. Now that I no longer felt so guilty and anxious about him, he became too remote to be a reality.”

Done Reality Belief Left Felt Religious Regret Burden Guilty Anxious Slips Belief In God Inadequacy Religious Life

Author:Karen Armstrong

“Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity.”

People Want Giving Religious Identity Ego Giving Up Compassionate Egotism

Author:Karen Armstrong

“Religions have always stressed that compassion is not only central to religious life, it is the key to enlightenment and it the true test of spirituality. But there have always have been those who'd rather put easier goals, like doctrine conformity, in place.”

Has Beens Spirituality Goal Religious Compassion Keys Easier Enlightenment Tests Doctrine Conformity Setting Goals Stressed Religious Life

Author:Karen Armstrong

“Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion is the key, that it's the sine-qua-non of religion, people look kind of balked, and stubborn sometimes, as much to say, what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people?”

People Ifs Looks Kind Important Sometimes Religious Compassion Virtue Keys Stubborn

Author:Karen Armstrong

“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.”

Thinking Mind Firsts Today Force Religious Accepting Horse Loyalty Doctrine Host Comprehension Carts Religious Life Trust And Loyalty

Author:Karen Armstrong

“Zionism was originally a rebellion against religious Judaism and the PLO Charter was essentially secularist. But because the conflict was allowed to fester without a resolution, religion got sucked into the escalating cycle of violence and became part of the problem.”

Problem Religious Violence Conflict Cycles Rebellion Resolution Judaism Charter Zionism Escalating Cycle Of Violence

Author:Karen Armstrong

“If professional religious leaders can [no longer] instruct..., our artists and creative writers can perhaps step into this priestly role and bring fresh insight to our lost and damaged world.”

Ifs World Artist Lost Religious Leader Steps Roles Creative Insight Religious Leaders Creative Writers

Book:A Short History Of Myth

Source: A Short History Of Myth

“I never intended to be a historian of religion. My aim was to become a professor of English Literature in a university, but I had a series of absolute career disasters and found myself making television programs about the nature of religion and about Christian history and started to discover about other religious traditions, and that was an absolute eye-opener for me.”

Eye Christian Found Literature Religious Careers Television Program Tradition Absolutes Aim Series University Disaster Professors Historian English Literature Religious Traditions

Author:Karen Armstrong

“From the Muslims I learned from the extraordinary pluralism of the Koran, the fact that the Koran endorses every single one of the major world faiths, but I was particularly enthralled by the Sufi tradition, the mystical tradition of Islam, which is so open to other religious faiths.”

World Facts Religious Majors Tradition Islam Extraordinary Mystical Sufi Religious Faith Pluralism

Author:Karen Armstrong

“I left the convent and that was because I wasn't a very good nun. I could see that I wasn't going to make it. It's very difficult to be a nun, or to live a religious life. It's very difficult to live a life of total celibacy or a life without any possessions or material responsibilities at all, or in total obedience to somebody else, and remain a mature whole human being, and I knew that I wasn't going to be one of those.”

Humans Whole Left Difficult Religious Human Beings Responsibility Materials Very Good Possession Obedience Mature Nun Celibacy Religious Life

Author:Karen Armstrong

“Golden Rule lies at the heart of every religious and of every ethical system of morality, it what makes us look at one another. The religions have all adopted it independently, Chinese, Indian, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, because they find it works and because it says something very deep about the structure of our humanity.”

Looks Heart Christian Lying Humanity Religious Morality Structure Golden Chinese Indian Ethical Adopted Very Deep Golden Rule

Author:Karen Armstrong

“It is not difficult to find a religious justification for killing.”

Difficult Religious Killing Justification

Book:The great transformation: the beginning of our religious traditions

Source: The great transformation: the beginning of our religious traditions

“Here in America, religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. They've lost the Axial Age vision of concern for everybody.”

People Age America Lost Religious Vision Concern Compassionate

Author:Karen Armstrong

“Even before 9/11 I was gripped by a sense of dread: our lack of criticism about what we were doing in the Middle East - the slagging off of a whole religious tradition.”

Whole Religious Middle Tradition Criticism East Middle East Dread Religious Traditions

Author:Karen Armstrong

“Religious ideas and practices take root not because they are promoted by forceful theologians, nor because they can be shown to have a sound historical or rational basis, but because they are found in practice to give the faithful a sense of sacred transcendence.”

Giving Ideas Found Sound Religious Practice Roots Bases Sacred Historical Rational Faithful Theologian Transcendence

Book:Islam: A Short History

Source: Islam: A Short History

“And sometimes it's the very otherness of a stranger, someone who doesn't belong to our ethnic or ideological or religious group, an otherness that can repel us initially, but which can jerk us out of our habitual selfishness, and give us intonations of that sacred otherness, which is God.”

Giving Sometimes Religious Groups Awareness Sacred Stranger Selfishness Ideological Jerk Habitual Otherness Intonation

Author:Karen Armstrong

“Often when religious leaders come together, they talk about a particular sexual ethic, or an abstruse doctrine, as though this, rather than compassion, was the test of spiritual life.”

Together Spiritual Religious Compassion Leader Particular Ethics Tests Doctrine Spiritual Life Religious Leaders

Author:Karen Armstrong

“After I left the convent, for 15 years I was worn out with religion, I wanted nothing whatever to do with it. I felt disgusted with it. If I saw someone reading a religious book on a train, I'd think, how awful.”

Ifs Thinking Years Book Wanted Reading Left Felt Religious Saws Train Awful Worn Worn Out Disgusted Religious Books

Author:Karen Armstrong

About the Author

Born: November 14, 1944
Known for: Author
Quotes: 195

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Books & Sources

A Short History Of MythRelated source material

The Spiral StaircaseRelated source material

The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of DarknessRelated source material

The Case for GodRelated source material

A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and IslamRelated source material

Twelve Steps to a Compassionate LifeRelated source material

Islam: A Short HistoryRelated source material

The Great Transformation: The World in the Time of Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and JeremiahRelated source material

A History Of GodRelated source material

Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of ViolenceRelated source material

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