Karen Armstrong Quotes

Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed.

'I don't believe you've changed at all, Charles.' 'No, I'm afraid not.' 'D'you want to change?' 'It's the only evidence of life.'

By changing the way you do routine things you allow a new man to grow inside you.

Every man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his market cart into a chariot of the sun.

To change skins, evolve into new cycles, I feel one has to learn to discard. If one changes internally one should not continue to live with the same objects. They reflect one's mind and psyche of yesterday. I throw away what has no dynamic, living use.

Program your mind with what God says about you and a transformation will take place.

Kabbalah is all about change. It isn't about being proud of our good qualities: the wisdom is about transforming our darkness into light.

I've tried to do away with lying in my life in the last few years, but it's hard.

The ultimate verification of our religion consists of the changed lives to which it can point and for which it is responsible.

Everybody is changing.

Remember that transformation is a present activity.

I find it fascinating that most people plan their vacation with better care than they do their lives. Perhaps that is because escape is easier than change

The most powerful thing you can do to change the world is to change your own beliefs about the nature of life, people, and reality to something more positive... and begin to act accordingly.

God loves you just the way you are, but he refuses to leave you that way.

Only when man is willing to change himself, there can be a true revolution.

I am not what I ought to be! Ah! how imperfect and deficient! - I am not what I wish to be! I 'abhor what is evil,' and I would 'cleave to what is good!' - I am not what I hope to be! Soon, soon, I shall put off mortality: and with mortality all sin and imperfection! Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was - a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the Apostle, and acknowledge; By the grace of God, I am what I am!

Religion must be life made true; and life is action, growth, development - begun now and ending never. And a life made true cannot confine itself - it must reach out and twine around every pulsing interest within reach of its uplifting tendrils.

Here's good news: God is even more committed to your change, your growth, and your transformation than you are.

The giving up of personality traits, well-established patterns of behavior, ideologies, and even whole life styles...these are major forms of giving up that are required if one is to travel very far on the journey of life.

No man need stay the way he is.

Good men study to spiritualize their bodies; bad men to incarnate their souls.

We cannot become what we need by remaining what we are.

Everything changes when you change.

If you knew me yesterday, please do not think that it is the same person that you are meeting today.

The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.