Latest Karen Armstrong Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I'm seeking to make sense of life, looking for its meaning and how we can have a better humanity.

  Karen Armstrong

  Humanity, Make Sense, Seeking

  "Sally Quinn on Author Karen Armstrong". Interview with Sally Quinn, www.washingtonpost.com. March 29, 2006.

• Sometimes I call myself a freelance, I can't see any one of the great religions as superior to others.

  Karen Armstrong

  Sometimes, Superiors, I Can

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• I used to hate religion, I loathed it in my angry days.

  Karen Armstrong

  Hate, Used, Hate Religion

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

• 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

  Mean, Heart, Issues

  "A conversation with Karen Armstrong". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• Many entire nations are marginalised by the more powerful nations. That is causing imbalance, violence and terror. Women must do their best to introduce another perspective.

  Karen Armstrong

  Powerful, Perspective, Violence

  "A conversation with Karen Armstrong". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• It is people who are violent, rather than "religions"; and since we secularised our politics we have had two major world wars, the Holocaust, the Soviet Gulag, and the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - none of which were inspired by religion. If we want to understand the dangers of our world, we can no longer accept the old received ideas.

  Karen Armstrong

  War, Ideas, Two

  "A conversation with Karen Armstrong". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• Let us bring something new to the table. Let us use our pain always to remember the others, bring them into the conversation, and get beyond the stereotypes and prejudices that create injustice all over the world.

  Karen Armstrong

  Pain, World, Tables

  "A conversation with Karen Armstrong". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• My greatest solace is my study. If I am deprived of my study, I can become lost, unhappy and unhinged.

  Karen Armstrong

  Unhappy, Study, Lost

  "A conversation with Karen Armstrong". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• I think I get from my books what other people get from family or a relationship or from prayer.

  Karen Armstrong

  Prayer, Book, Thinking

  "A conversation with Karen Armstrong". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• Beethoven's string quartets express pain itself; it is not MY pain.

  Karen Armstrong

  Pain, Strings, Quartets

  Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com. April 30, 2013.

• I have become convinced, through my studies, that the only way to achieve a safe, just and viable world is to live by the Golden Rule. This is what drives my writing. I want to point out this interconnectedness, point out the beauty of the faith in all traditions without exception, show the complexity of the atrocities that we have experienced, and our shared culpability as a species.

  Karen Armstrong

  Writing, World, Safe

  "A conversation with Karen Armstrong". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• I remind myself that my pain is not unique. Everybody suffers.

  Karen Armstrong

  Pain, Unique, Suffering

  Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com. April 30, 2013.

• My study of religion, which I regard in many ways as an art form, is a search for meaning.

  Karen Armstrong

  Art, Way, Study

  "A conversation with Karen Armstrong". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• I am continually trying to find meaning in the world. If we cannot find some ultimate significance or value in our lives, we fall very easily into despair.

  Karen Armstrong

  Fall, Trying, Despair

  "A conversation with Karen Armstrong". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

• The early doctrines of the church, even doctrines like Trinity and Incarnation were originally also calls for action, calls for selflessness, calls for compassion, and unless you live that out compassionately, selflessly, you didn't understand what the doctrine was saying.

  Karen Armstrong

  Compassion, Church, Doctrine

  "Big Think Interview With Karen Armstrong". Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

• Illness itself can make you angry, enraged, furious, and it made me angry, enraged, and furious. I don't think it brought me to God at all. It depends how you deal with it. And I think that, at its best, three little words that always have to be applied to religion, religion can help you to deal with that.

  Karen Armstrong

  Thinking, Three, Littles

  "Big Think Interview With Karen Armstrong". Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

• Important thing about myth is that it's not just something that you believe, a myth is essentially a program for action. And unless you translate a mythical story, or a doctrine out of the church, into practical action, it just remains incomprehensible. Rather like the rules of a board game which seem very sort of dull and complicated and incomprehensible until you pick up the dice and start to play, when everything falls into place.

  Karen Armstrong

  Believe, Fall, Games

  Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

• A science can diagnose a cancer and can even find a cure for it, but it can't, and a scientist will be the first to say, it's can't help you to deal with the stress and disappointment and terror that comes with a diagnosis, and nor can it help you to die well, like Socrates, kindly, not railing against faith, but in possession of your own death. For these imponderable questions people have turned to mythos.

  Karen Armstrong

  Disappointment, Cancer, Stress

  Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

• People knew there were two ways of coming at truth. One was science, or what the Greeks called Logos, reason, logic. And that was essential that the discourse of science or logic related directed to the external world. The other was mythos, what the Greeks called myth, which didn't mean a fantasy story, but it was a narrative associated with ritual and ethical practice but it helped us to address problems for which there were no easy answers, like mortality, cruelty, the sorrow that overtakes us all that's part of the human condition. And these two were not in opposition, we needed both.

  Karen Armstrong

  Mean, Practice, Two

  "Big Think Interview With Karen Armstrong". Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

• If your child dies, or you witness a terrible natural disaster, yes, you certainly want a scientific explanation as to what's happened. But science can't help you to find meaning, help you deal with that turbulence of your grief, rage, and dismay.

  Karen Armstrong

  Children, Grief, Want

  Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

• I want to create a rapid response team, right around the world, perhaps starting originally with our partners, similar to the one we have in the United Nations whereby, where there's a problem in our society which demands a compassionate response, an educated, informed, not just a splurgy emotional thing, but an informed compassionate response that puts yourself in the position of the other and sees all sides of the problem, not just your own, there'll be somebody poised in each society who can write to the media, write an op-ed piece, to go on TV or radio.

  Karen Armstrong

  Team, Writing, Emotional

  "Big Think Interview With Karen Armstrong". Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

• We are opinionated society. We're very happy to spout forth our own views; we're not good about listening. We have to listen to other's stories. Learn to listen to the stories of the terrorists just as we hope that they will listen to ours because very often these narratives express frustrations, fears, and anxieties that most societies can safely ignore.

  Karen Armstrong

  Frustration, Views, Anxiety

  "Big Think Interview With Karen Armstrong". Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

• We want to create, never mind the leaders or the bishops or chief rabbis or imams, or Popes. We want to create a grassroots movement where people will become attuned to uncompassionate discourse in the same way as we are now attuned to sort of gender imbalance in our speech.

  Karen Armstrong

  People, Leader, Mind

  Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

• 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

  Views, Order, Wish

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com.

• We have to make a disciplined effort to find out what our governments are doing in these various parts of the world and what is actually happening. We have to learn to listen to each other's stories. Something we are not very good at.

  Karen Armstrong

  Government, Effort, Stories

  "Big Think Interview With Karen Armstrong". Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.