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Karen Armstrong QUOTES

Karen Armstrong QUOTES

1 " Ibn al-Arabi gave this advice:
Do not attach yourself to any particular creed exclusively, so that you may disbelieve all the rest; otherwise you will lose much good, nay, you will fail to recognize the real truth of the matter. God, the omnipresent and omnipotent, is not limited by any one creed, for he says, 'Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah' (Koran 2:109). Everyone praises what he believes; his god is his own creature, and in praising it he praises himself. Consequently, he blames the disbelief of others, which he would not do if he were just, but his dislike is based on ignorance. "

― Karen Armstrong , A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

2 " Yet a personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs. fears and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them. "

― Karen Armstrong , A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

3 " 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. "

― Karen Armstrong , The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness

4 " In the tenth century BC, the priests of India devised the Brahmodya competition, which would become a model of authentic theological discourse. The object was to find a verbal formula to define the Brahman, the ultimate and inexpressible reality beyond human understanding. The idea was to push language as far as it would go, until participants became aware of the ineffable. The challenger, drawing on his immense erudition, began the process by asking an enigmatic question and his opponents had to reply in a way that was apt but equally inscrutable. The winner was the contestant who reduced the others to silence. In that moment of silence, the Brahman was present - not in the ingenious verbal declarations but in the stunning realisation of the impotence of speech. Nearly all religious traditions have devised their own versions of this exercise. It was not a frustrating experience; the finale can, perhaps, be compared to the moment at the end of the symphony, when there is a full and pregnant beat of silence in the concert hall before the applause begins. The aim of good theology is to help the audience to live for a while in that silence. "

― Karen Armstrong , The Case for God

5 " I had failed to make a gift of myself to God. "

― Karen Armstrong , The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness

6 " Unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that can keep abreast of our technological genius, it is unlikely that we will save our planet. A purely rational education will not suffice. "

― Karen Armstrong , The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions

7 " We need myths that will help us to identify with all our fellow-beings, not simply with those who belong to our ethnic, national or ideological tribe. We need myths that help us to realize the importance of compassion, which is not always regarded as sufficiently productive or efficient in our pragmatic, rational world. We need myths that help us to create a spiritual attitude, to see beyond our immediate requirements, and enable us to experience a transcendent value that challenges our solipsistic selfishness. We need myths that help us to venerate the earth as sacred once again, instead of merely using it as a 'resource.' This is crucial, because unless there is some kind of spiritual revolution that is able to keep abreast of our technological genius, we will not save our planet. "

― Karen Armstrong , A Short History of Myth

8 " 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. "

― Karen Armstrong , The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness

9 " Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, of self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself. They do not do this because it sounds edifying, but because this is the way that human nature seems to work. We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transcend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind. "

― Karen Armstrong , The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness

10 " Of all the great world religions, Christianity should value the body most. After all, it taught that God had in some sense taken a human body and used it to redeem the world; everything about the physical should have been sacred and sacramental. But that had not happened. instead, the churches had found it almost impossible to integrate the sexual with the divine and had developed a Platonic aversion to the body - particularly the bodies of women. "

― Karen Armstrong , The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness

11 " I discovered that I felt at home and alive in the silence, which compelled me to enter my interior world and around there. Without the distraction of constant conversation, the words on the page began to speak directly to my inner self. They were no long expressing ideas that were simply interesting intellectually, but were talking directly to my own yearning and perplexity. "

― Karen Armstrong , The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness

12 " [T]he family is a school of compassion because it is here that we learn to live with other people. (68) "

― Karen Armstrong , Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life

13 " Mythology was never designed to describe historically verifiable events that actually happened. It was an attempt to express their inner significance or to draw attention to realities that were too elusive to be discussed in a logically coherent way. "

― Karen Armstrong , Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths

14 " I did not want to appear before the world as pathetic, deprssed, and psychologically ill. So I erected a barrier of words and wit around myself, so that nobody could see how needy I really was. "

― Karen Armstrong

15 " In each of the early surahs, God spoke intimately to the individual, often preferring to pose many of his teachings in the form of a question - 'Have you not heard?' 'Do you consider?' 'Have you not seen?'. Each listener was thus invited to interrogate him or herself. Any response to these queries was usually grammatically ambiguous or indefinite, leaving the audience with an image on which to meditate but with no decisive answer. This new religion was not about achieving metaphysical certainty; the Quran wanted people to develop a different kind of awarness. "

― Karen Armstrong , Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

16 " Breath control is crucial to most of the contemplative traditions... Qur'anic reciters chant long phrases for meditation. It is natural for the audience to adjust their breathing too and find that this has a calming, therapeutic effect, which enables them to grasp the more elusive teachings of the text. "

― Karen Armstrong , Muhammad: A Prophet for Our Time

17 " If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void. (95) "

― Karen Armstrong , Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life

18 " Humiliate your enemy is dangerous. "

― Karen Armstrong , Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life

19 " Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment. "

― Karen Armstrong , The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness

20 " Then, as now, there would always be people who preferred the option of devoting their religious energies to sacred space over the more difficult duty of compassion. "

― Karen Armstrong , Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths