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Mohammed was not an apparent failure. He was a dazzling success, politically as well as spiritually, and Islam went from strength to strength to strength.

— Karen Armstrong NOW interview (2002)

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More quotes by Karen Armstrong

Religion is hard work. Its insights are not self-evident and have to be cultivated in the same way as an appreciation of art, music, or poetry must be developed.

The Case for God (2009)

Monotheism is essentially inimical to tribalism: it demands that a people unite in a single community.

Muhammad: A Biography of The Prophet (2001)

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 Joins Pangea Day! (2008)

If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void.

I say that 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.

Profile at TEDprize.org (2009)

All Karen Armstrong quotes →

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We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

Doris Lessing The Golden Notebook (1962)

To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.

Confucius

Greatness by nature includes a power, but not a will to power.

Martin Buber Between Man and Man (1965)

The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Karen Armstrong (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.