Karen Armstrong Quotes About Giving

Quotes about: Giving

• 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

  Life, Pain, Motivation

  "How Can We Make The World More Compassionate?". Interview with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. December 19, 2014.

• And sometimes it's the very otherness of a stranger, someone who doesn't belong to our ethnic or ideological or religious group, an otherness that can repel us initially, but which can jerk us out of our habitual selfishness, and give us intonations of that sacred otherness, which is God.

  Karen Armstrong

  Religious, Giving, Selfishness

  "Now" with Bill Moyers, www.pbs.org.

• Religion isn’t about believing things. It's ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.

  Karen Armstrong

  Believe, Giving, Religion

• Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment. It dethrones the ego from the center of our lives and puts others there, breaking down the carapace of the selfishness that holds us back from an experience of the sacred. And it gives us ecstasy, broadening our perspectives and giving us a larger, enhanced vision.

  Karen Armstrong

  Mean, Compassion, Perspective

  Karen Armstrong (2010). “The Spiral Staircase”, p.331, Vintage Canada

• Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity.

  Karen Armstrong

  Religious, Giving Up, People

  "FINDING MY RELIGION / Part 1: World-renowned religious scholar Karen Armstrong talks about today's religious conflicts and how the past can help". Interview with David Ian Miller, www.sfgate.com. April 10, 2006.

• 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

  Queens, Children, War

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

• A mode of knowledge rooted in silence and intuitive insight which gives meaning to life but which cannot be explained in rational terms.

  Karen Armstrong

  Giving, Silence, Atheism

• Western liberal humanism is not something that comes naturally to us: like an appreciation of art or poetry, it has to be cultivated. Humanism is itself a religion without God-not all religions, of course, are theistic. Our ethical secular ideal has it's own disciplines of mind and heart and gives people the means of finding faith in the ultimate meaning of human life that were once provided by the more conventional religions.

  Karen Armstrong

  Appreciation, Art, Mean

• Religious ideas and practices take root not because they are promoted by forceful theologians, nor because they can be shown to have a sound historical or rational basis, but because they are found in practice to give the faithful a sense of sacred transcendence.

  Karen Armstrong

  Religious, Practice, Ideas

  Karen Armstrong (2002). “Islam: A Short History”, Random House Digital, Inc.

• You are your best self when you give yourself away.

  Karen Armstrong

  Self, Giving, Best Self

• Compassion is aptly summed up in the Golden Rule, which asks us to look into our own hearts, discover what gives us pain, and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else. Compassion can be defined, therefore, as an attitude of principled, consistent altruism.

  Karen Armstrong

  Pain, Attitude, Heart

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