Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Karen Armstrong
Age: 79
Born: 1944
Born: November 14
Author
Historian Of Religion
Islamicist
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Worcs
Christian
Original
Around
Later
Great
Sin
Preoccupied
Good
Spend
Trinity
Time
Deal
Incarnation
Deals
Compassionate
Went
Christians
Jesus
Originals

More quotes by Karen Armstrong

Image
Intelligence doesn't just mean tracking down terrorists It means finding out what is in people's hearts and minds and discovering the complexity of most issues.
Karen Armstrong
Image
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
Image
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
Image
You put yourself in the receptive frame of mind with which we approach music or poetry, which you can measure the difference on a neurological scanner.
Karen Armstrong
Image
In the past some of the most influential Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians, such as Maimonides, Aquinas and Ibn Sina, made it clear that it was very difficult to speak about God, because when we confront the ultimate, we are at the end of what words or thoughts can do.
Karen Armstrong
Image
The only way to show a true respect for God is to act morally while ignoring God’s existence.
Karen Armstrong
Image
I remind myself that my pain is not unique. Everybody suffers.
Karen Armstrong
Image
My study of religion, which I regard in many ways as an art form, is a search for meaning.
Karen Armstrong
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.
Karen Armstrong
Image
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.
Karen Armstrong
Image
...there is something wrong with any spirituality that does not inspire selfless concern for others
Karen Armstrong
Image
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
Image
Nirvana is something within you. It is not an external reality. No god thunders down from the mountaintop. Just as the great mystics in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths all discovered, God is within the self. God is virtually inseparable from ourselves.
Karen Armstrong
Image
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
Image
Fundamentalists are not friends of democracy. And that includes your fundamentalists in the United States.
Karen Armstrong
Image
A theology should be like poetry, which takes us to the end of what words and thoughts can do.
Karen Armstrong
Image
Look into your own heart, discover what it is that gives you pain and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.
Karen Armstrong
Image
We are addicted to our egotism, our likes and dislikes and prejudices, and depend upon them for our own sense of identity.
Karen Armstrong
Image
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
Image
There must be no coercion in matters of faith!
Karen Armstrong