Quote

For centuries, the Muslims were able to co-exist perfectly well with Jews and Christians in the Middle East.

Karen Armstrong

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Karen Armstrong
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: November 14
Author
Historian Of Religion
Islamicist
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Worcs
Century
Muslims
Middle
Centuries
Christian
Jews
Able
Jew
Wells
Perfectly
Well
Christians
East
Exist

More quotes by 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
From the Rabbis of the early Talmudic age I learned that there is never a last word on God. There's, you always continue to question. Even God himself could be questioned and you can keep arguing with one another and there will be no end to this conversation about the divine because no human expression of God can be ultimate.
Karen Armstrong
Image
If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void.
Karen Armstrong
Image
We talk about God as though he was like a somebody. We ask him to bless our nation, or save our Queen, or give us a fine day for the picnic. And we actually expect him to be on our side in an election or war even though our opponents are also God's children.
Karen Armstrong
Image
When you feel compassion, you dethrone yourself from the centre of the world.
Karen Armstrong
Image
If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, of self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology.
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
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
Huge imbalance in power has resulted in the alienation, rage, fury, and awful amoral terrorism that has erupted and is erupting at the present time. And in order to counter this, we need to make the compassionate voice of religion and morality a dynamic force in our world.
Karen Armstrong
Image
We can't say what God is, and until the modern period, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theologians in the three God religions all knew that. They insisted that we have no idea what we meant when we said that God was good, or wise, or intelligent.
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
Like art, religion is an imaginative and creative effort to find a meaning and value in human life.
Karen Armstrong
Image
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.
Karen Armstrong
Image
Saint Augustine ... insisted that scripture taught nothing but charity. Whatever the biblical author may have intended, any passage that seemed to preach hatred and was not conducive to love must be interpreted allegorically and made to speak of charity.
Karen Armstrong
Image
Compassion is not feeling sorry for others. It's not soft. It requires an intellectual effort.
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
Geniuses are not always pleasant people.
Karen Armstrong
Image
there is no ascent to the heights without prior descent into darkness, no new life without some form of death.
Karen Armstrong
Image
Fundamentalists are not friends of democracy. And that includes your fundamentalists in the United States.
Karen Armstrong
Image
Creation stories had never been regarded as historically accurate their purpose was therapeutic. But once you start reading Genesis as scientifically valid, you have bad science and bad religion.
Karen Armstrong