Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" I am not interested in the afterlife. Religion is supposed to be about losing your ego, not preserving it eternally in optimum conditions. "
Karen Armstrong
I Am
Ego
Losing
Related Quotes:
" Today mythical thinking has fallen into disrepute; we often dismiss it as irrational and self-indulgent. But the imagination is also the faculty that has enabled scientists to bring new knowledge to light and to invent technology that has made us immeasurably more effective. "
Karen Armstrong
New
Today
Knowledge
" Yes, all fundamentalists feel that in a secular society, God has been relegated to the margin, to the periphery and they are all in different ways seeking to drag him out of that peripheral position, back to center stage. "
Karen Armstrong
God
Yes
Stage
" Well, logos is science or reason, something that helps us to function practically and effectively in the world, and it must therefore be closely in tune and reflect accurately the realities of the world around us. "
Karen Armstrong
World
Reason
Us
" Storytelling is fine as long as you can encourage people to act on the stories. "
Karen Armstrong
Storytelling
You
Stories
" We have domesticated God's transcendence. We often learn about God at about the same time as we are learning about Santa Claus; but our ideas about Santa Claus change, mature and become more nuanced, whereas our ideas of God can remain at a rather infantile level. "
Karen Armstrong
More
Change
God
" 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. "
Karen Armstrong
Few
People
Nun
" The first person to promulgate the Golden Rule, which was the bedrock of this empathic spirituality, was Confucius 500 years before Christ. "
Karen Armstrong
Years
Rule
Person
" Let's use our stories to encourage listening to one another and to hear not just the good news, but also the pain that lies at the back of a lot of people's stories and histories. "
Karen Armstrong
Good
Listening
Pain
" A theology should be like poetry, which takes us to the end of what words and thoughts can do. "
Karen Armstrong
Poetry
Like
Us
" Islam is a religion of success. Unlike Christianity, which has as its main image, in the west at least, a man dying in a devastating, disgraceful, helpless death. "
Karen Armstrong
Success
Death
Dying
" Human beings have always been mythmakers. "
Karen Armstrong
Always
Human
Been
" 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. "
Karen Armstrong
Off
Criticism
Doing
" Pain is something that's common to human life. When we ignore it, we aren't engaging in the whole reality, and the pain begins to fester. "
Karen Armstrong
Human
Life
Pain
" If we want to create a viable, peaceful world, we've got to integrate compassion into the gritty realities of 21st century life. "
Karen Armstrong
Peaceful
Life
Compassion
" The hajj is one of the five essential practices of Islam; when they make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims ritually act out the central principles of their faith. "
Karen Armstrong
Islam
Out
Principles
" 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. "
Karen Armstrong
Today
Faith
Life
" Alas, all traditions lose their primal purity and we all fail our founders. "
Karen Armstrong
Alas
Purity
Traditions
" Compassion is not a popular virtue. "
Karen Armstrong
Compassion
Virtue
Popular
" Compassion doesn't, of course, mean feeling sorry for people, or pity, which is how the word has become emasculated in a way. "
Karen Armstrong
Sorry
People
Feeling
" I believe in holiness and sacredness in other people. It doesn't mean that the clouds part and I see God. That's a juvenile way of thinking about it. "
Karen Armstrong
Believe
Thinking
People
" 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. "
Karen Armstrong
Worship
Know
Human
" Fundamentalists are not friends of democracy. And that includes your fundamentalists in the United States. "
Karen Armstrong
Friends
Your
United States
" When violence becomes imbedded in a region, then this affects everything. It affects your dreams, your fantasies and relationships, and your religion becomes violent, too. "
Karen Armstrong
Violence
Religion
Your Dreams
" 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. "
Karen Armstrong
Intellectual
Love
Beginning
" Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied later Christians. He went around doing good and being compassionate. "
Karen Armstrong
Good
Great
Doing
" I have nothing maternal in me, and men want to be mothered a lot of the time. "
Karen Armstrong
Men
Nothing
Time
" Buddhists talk about nirvana in very much the same terms as monotheists describe God. "
Karen Armstrong
Describe
Much
Nirvana
" All religions are designed to teach us how to live, joyfully, serenely, and kindly, in the midst of suffering. "
Karen Armstrong
Religions
Teach
Us
" 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. "
Karen Armstrong
Religion
Problem
Conflict
" The values of Islam are expressed by Muslims clearly. September 11 changed the world, and put Muslims on the spotlight. "
Karen Armstrong
Islam
Changed
World