Karen Armstrong: Other

Karen Armstrong is author and comparative religion scholar from Great Britain. Explore interesting quotes on other.

Karen Armstrong: 112 quotes1 like

“A project like Pangea, which enables us to enter in to the situations of others, imaginatively, is fulfilling what the religions call the Golden Rule…”

Karen Armstrong

"Karen Armstrong Joins Pangea Day!" (2008) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ5ZmB2kdo0 <br class="br">Context: A project like Pangea, which enables us to enter in to the situations of others, imaginatively, is fulfilling what the religions call the Golden Rule... going into one's own experience, and going into other's experience, and seeing the world from another perspective — that's what we desperately need in our dangerously polarized world.

“We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transcend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind.”

Karen Armstrong

The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)
Context: We are, the great spiritual writers insist, most fully ourselves when we give ourselves away, and it is egotism that holds us back from that transcendent experience that has been called God, Nirvana, Brahman, or the Tao.
What I now realize, from my study of the different religious traditions, is that a disciplined attempt to go beyond the ego brings about a state of ecstasy. Indeed, it is in itself ekstasis. Theologians in all the great faiths have devised all kinds of myths to show that this type of kenosis, or self-emptying, is found in the life of God itself. They do not do this because it sounds edifying, but because this is the way that human nature seems to work. We are most creative and sense other possibilities that transcend our ordinary experience when we leave ourselves behind.

“[T]he family is a school of compassion because it is here that we learn to live with other people. (68)”

Karen Armstrong

Source: Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life

“Surely it's better to love others, however messy and imperfect the involvement, than to allow one's capacity for love to harden.”

Karen Armstrong

Source: Through the Narrow Gate: A Memoir of Spiritual Discovery

“He was simply a nadhir, a messenger with a warning, and should approach the Quraysh humbly, avoid provocation, and be careful not to attack their gods. This is what the great prophets had done in the past.28 A prophet had to be altruistic; he must not trumpet his own opinions egotistically or trample on the sensibilities of others, but should always put the welfare of the community first.”

Karen Armstrong

Muhammad: A Prophet of Our Times
Muhammad: A Biography of The Prophet (2001)

“I tremble for our world, where, in the smallest ways, we find it impossible, as Marshall Hodgson enjoined, to find room for the other in our minds. If we cannot accommodate a viewpoint in a friend without resorting to unkindness, how can we hope to heal the terrible problems of our planet? I no longer think that any principle or opinion is worth anything if it makes you unkind or intolerant.”

Karen Armstrong

The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)