Karen Armstrong quotes - page 3

It's a great event to get outside and enjoy nature. I find it very exciting no matter how many times I see bald eagles. (Karen Armstrong)
There are some forms of religion that are bad, just as there's bad cooking or bad art or bad sex, you have bad religion too. View quote
Karen Armstrong
At the beginning of the twentieth century, every single leading Muslim intellectual was in love with the west, and wanted their countries to look just like Britain and France. View quote
Karen Armstrong
Now I think one of the reasons why religion developed in the way that it did over the centuries was precisely to curb this murderous bent that we have as human beings. View quote
Karen Armstrong
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 people. View quote
Karen Armstrong
Storytelling is fine as long as you can encourage people to act on the stories. View quote
Karen Armstrong
Muslims respect the pacifist message of Jesus (even though the Qu'ran points out that Christians can be very belligerent but they accept that force is sometimes necessary. If tyrants and loathsome regimes were not opposed militarily, evil would have swamped the whole world. View quote
Karen Armstrong
Some people simply bury their heads in the sand and refuse to think about the sorrow of the world, but this is an unwise course, because, if we are entirely unprepared, the tragedy of life can be devastating. View quote
Karen Armstrong
There is a danger in monotheism, and it's called idolatry. And we know the prophets of Israel were very, very concerned about idolatry, the worship of a human expression of the divine. View quote
Karen Armstrong
You were at home equally in a synagogue, a mosque, a temple or a church, because all rightly guided religion comes from God, and a man of God, once he's glimpsed the divine, has left these man-made distinctions behind. View quote
Karen Armstrong
All fundamentalist movements... whether they're Jewish, Christian or Muslim or Buddhist, all begin as an intra-religious debate, an intra-religious struggle. (Karen Armstrong)
We can't even say that God exists because our notion of existence is too limited to apply to God. View quote
Karen Armstrong
If we want to create a viable, peaceful world, we've got to integrate compassion into the gritty realities of 21st century life. View quote
Karen Armstrong
We can either emphasize those aspects of our traditions, religious or secular, that speak of hatred, exclusion, and suspicionwork with those that stress the interdependence and equality of all human beings. The choice is yours. (22) View quote
Karen Armstrong
The word qur'an means "recitation.”. View quote
Karen Armstrong
There are some forms of religion that must make God weep. View quote
Karen Armstrong
This is where some of the worst atrocities of religion have come from. Because people have used [it] - to give a sacred seal of a divine approval to some of their most worst hatreds, loathings, and fears. View quote
Karen Armstrong
Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, or self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself. View quote
Karen Armstrong
Secularism has shown that it can be just as murderous, just as lethal ... as religion. View quote
Karen Armstrong
Some of them even said that the Europeans ... were better Muslims than they themselves, because their modern society had enabled them to create a fairer and more just distribution of wealth, than was possible in their pre-modern climates, and that accorded more perfectly with the vision of the Quran. View quote
Karen Armstrong
A lot of the arguments about religion going on at the moment spring from a rather inept understanding of religious truth. (Karen Armstrong)
We are, the great spiritual writers insist, most fully ourselves when we give ourselves away, and it is egotism that holds us back from that transcendent experience that has been called God, Nirvana, Brahman, or the Tao. View quote
Karen Armstrong
A project like Pangea, which enables us to enter in to the situations of others, imaginatively, is fulfilling what the religions call the Golden Rule... View quote
Karen Armstrong
Religion is really an art form and a struggle to find value and meaning amid the ghastly tragedy of human life. View quote
Karen Armstrong
You have to practice quite hard, like you do with any art form. Religion is hard work. View quote
Karen Armstrong