Quote

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

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
Looks
Compassion
Giving
Anybody
Heart
Circumstances
Inflict
Life
Gives
Circumstance
Inspiration
Whatsoever
Pain
Discover
Else
Refuse
Look
Motivation

More quotes by 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
You have to get into the water and learn against what seems to be the law gravity to float and dancing, or athletics takes you years before you develop a skill. But if you work at it, practicing daily, you can enable your body to do things that are utterly impossible to an untrained physic.
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
Compassion is not feeling sorry for others. It's not soft. It requires an intellectual effort.
Karen Armstrong
Image
Every fundamentalist movement I've studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced at some gut, visceral level that secular liberal society wants to wipe out religion.
Karen Armstrong
Image
Geniuses are not always pleasant people.
Karen Armstrong
Image
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.
Karen Armstrong
Image
...there is something wrong with any spirituality that does not inspire selfless concern for others
Karen Armstrong
Image
You know how it is in the symphony when you are listening to the symphony, the last notes die away, and there's often a beat of silence in the auditorium before the applause begins. It's a very full and pregnant silence. Now theology should bring us to live into that silence, into that pregnant pause.
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 a nice thing. It is potentially a very dangerous thing because it involves a heady complex of emotions, desires, yearnings and fears.
Karen Armstrong
Image
Eventually, with regret, I left the religious life, and, once freed of the burden of failure and inadequacy, I felt my belief in God slip quietly away. He had never really impinged upon my life, though I had done my best to enable him to do so. Now that I no longer felt so guilty and anxious about him, he became too remote to be a reality.
Karen Armstrong
Image
In order to always treat others, as we would wish to be treated ourselves, we have to learn about each other. Not just relying on an op-ed piece we may have read here, or a half-remembered interview on the television program there that happens to chime with our own views.
Karen Armstrong
Image
Religions have always stressed that compassion is not only central to religious life, it is the key to enlightenment and it the true test of spirituality. But there have always have been those who'd rather put easier goals, like doctrine conformity, in place.
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
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
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
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 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
It is not difficult to find a religious justification for killing.
Karen Armstrong