Karen Armstrong Quotes

I studied English literature; I took 2 independent religion classes, but I wasn't a religion major really.

In 1973, I was offered a professorship at the University of California, San Diego. Although I was certainly not unhappy at Nottingham, I had been there over twenty years from starting undergraduate studies to Professor of Applied Statistics and Econometrics, and I thought that a change of scene was worth considering.

I served as Dean until 1974, when I stepped down to return to full time teaching and research.

By that time I was hooked on a career in academic research instead of one in the pharmaceutical industry that I had originally considered in deciding to get a PhD.

I wanted to be a political science professor and go to school in Boston. I never wanted to be a big, famous movie star and TV star. It kind of found me.

The essays in The Great Taos Bank Robbery were my project to win a Master of Arts degree in English when I quit being a newspaper editor and went back to college.

I didn't want to be an accountant; I found myself being a banker, which was a bit different. I went to university, and I was going to do a Ph.D. in the States, but I didn't get the funding for it, so I had two years where I had a bit of a wobble and didn't really know what I wanted to do, and I ended up working as a banker.

After my health suffered due to the stress of running my second company, I had to switch careers. But I still didn't want to go back to the corporate world. So I became an academic.

After Brown, I went to Duke, to a Ph.D. program in American literature. My dad's an English professor. After a year there, I was like, 'Jesus. I don't want to do this. I don't want to be in the library.' So I pulled the ripcord, and that was it.

I thought I was going to be a professor; then I ran screaming from there into magazine journalism.

After 'The White Shadow' was over, I did some more work, but then I wound up taking a year off to teach at Harvard. It afforded me the chance to have a variegated career - a very interesting one.

I went to college and graduate school, studying philosophy. I really did think I was going to wind up being a lecturer or professor of some sort.

I have a masters in African-American literature, and I got a Ph.D. in American Literature. I spent a number of years teaching as a professor in the university system. Then I turned forty and decided I was going to be the woman I wanted to be!

I won a really big fellowship to go straight on to get my Ph.D. And I went through agonies of indecision, and then I decided not to accept it. I just decided I didn't want to be an academic.

To support its conclusion that 'this is a religious people... this is a Christian nation,' the Court paraded a veritable litany of precedents from American history: taken from Church of the Holy Trinity v. U.S.; 143 U.S. 457-458 (1892).

I have tried reading the Bible but that's a tough read there. I watch a lot of religious documentaries. I have a keen interest in religion for someone who's not religious.

I cannot wait until the day I can go back to school... I've already picked my program: anthropology at Columbia. I will not get in, but a girl can dream.

When my father finished his Ph.D., my mother went back for another bachelor's degree, this time in environmental science.

When I hit 50, I want to go be a professor.

But it's true, I was a sports organiser at Pontins - one of a series of terrible jobs I had before I started doing comedy full time.

Maybe after my third album, I'll just go to uni. That would be really cool.

I went to Carnegie Mellon for a year and a month or two, and then I dropped out because I got a movie. I didn't anticipate ever leaving school - I was a really serious drama student - and then that happened, and my life sort of took a turn.

Since I was a young girl, I always wanted to pursue law studies. I would have never imagined that my career would have taken a complete different route.

I studied philosophy at Columbia, then dropped out to do drama at the Lee Strasberg Institute.

I arrived in the U.S. for graduate study in literature in the fall of 1986. I was twenty-three. After a year, I began to paint, even though I had come to the U.S. intending to become a writer.