YouSaid · the spoken record

Karen Armstrong

lines on the record

56

first

2018-12-26

most recent

2018-12-26

sittings or episodes

1

sources

podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

1. “When we learn that we are not the center of the universe, neither ourselves as individuals nor our nation nor our culture, that we are all equal, we are all God's children, and we all have needs and pains and desires, and we will live or stand together or we will fall.”

   2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Yes, that I was attracted each one. I mean, I love the Buddhist emphasis on practice rather than dogma. Yes. I love the pluralism of the Quran. The Quran says, we're not all supposed to be in one religious community. And Judaism, I love, because you never stop asking questions. And I love that openness and that ability to question even God and not to give up.”

   2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “In my study. For me, it's at my desk, I see that as my prayer, I work all day to try and explain things, to learn more, and I get moments of awe and wonder when I've just lifted from myself.”

   2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “When I was a very little girl. We used to go to the woods sometimes. And that sense of being in the moment, blue as far as you can see, beech leaves, sunlight, my parents there, and everything sort of coming together. And I think that's a sense of what sacred is what God is.”

   2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “I have no idea. And I'm much happier for it. My religious life was ruined as a young girl by concentrating on getting into heaven. For me, what we have is now the only thing we can be absolutely certain about is that we have this moment now to live intensely in this moment, living for others.”

   2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “There's no words, it's like the end of a symphony when the last notes die away and there's a pregnant beat of silence in the hall very often before the applause begins. And when we talk about God, we're supposed to lead people into that beat of silence where you say, oh, that's it, that's it. Nothing to be said, but that's it. Full sort of significant silence. Theology should push us into that moment.”

   2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “I refuse to define God. God cannot be defined because the word define means to set limits on something. God is more than we can conceive. God is, as the Muslims say, Allahu Akba means God is always greater than we can imagine or think.”

   2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “And you work on yourself and you become happier. But it's hard work. And a lot of people are going to be like me saying, Well, that's not for me. But you can do it and it enriches your life. And it's the only thing that's worth doing in the world is to make the world a kinder place where people can live and grow and thrive and not.”

   2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “We're not going to plan it. He's not going to survive. They're not. I was not. I'm not naturally compassionate person, I have to say. I've got a very sharp tongue. I've got a cruel sense of humour that I inherited from my grandmother. And people used to say to me, I would hate to be your enemy. I was so angry and mad, it was all those dark years that I had”

   2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Do so well. That's it. But you see that makes you a smaller person when you are so wrapped up. I'm thinking let's just not even think of global enemies but the people we don't like in our own lives we think are doing us down or have injured us in the past and we meditate on these people. We think about dwell on their bad qualities. Yes, yes.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Family foot. I think it's a good idea to think in terms of Confucius' thought in terms of concentric circles. Look around your own family. Is there somebody there that is distressed or left out or could do with a phone call? How can we make this family a more compassionate place, a more compassionate home and then think of our city and then our nation?”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “And that means, as we were saying, you have to take responsibility for your shadow side, accept what you've got, what is not so good about you. Say that's the way I am. I'll do my best to improve, but I am a flawed person nevertheless. I can live this compassionate life.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “And somehow in our rushed society where we're so always so busy and goal oriented, we need to remind ourselves of that supreme value, the sanctity, the supreme value that exists in every single human being.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “It's very flawed. Behind each person lies a whole history of associations of joy, of happiness, of events that we'll never know. And to have that utter reverence for that unknowness, the mystery that we encounter in everybody we meet. It's why the Hindus, when they greet one another. Will bow and join their hands. They're acknowledging the divinity that they're encountering in the other person, that absolute mystery.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Take a little practice, you can do all day and every day. When you're in the office or at home or going to work on the commuter train, look at the person sitting next to you and say, what do I know about this person? What do I really know about this person? I may see them every day, but do I know what makes her cry in the night? What do I know about the girl who's checking me out in the supermarket? Sometimes I'm impatient, and she's a woman stupid, she's so slow. What do I really know about that woman? Her home circumstances. Her suffering. Just get that habit”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “This is me. It's in my brain and we all have these impulses. The job is to control it and to somehow turn it into something more productive.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Well, what we do, if we just push out our own evil, we make evil inhuman. People often say it's inhuman what's been done. Unfortunately, it is all too human. It's what we do, unfortunately. And so we have to acknowledge our own potentiality for evil, not push it outside onto the devil, but take responsibility for it. When we feel sometimes murderous anger at people, we all do.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “And that's what we must say to ourselves. We can all be that one person, as Gandhi said, you must yourself become the change you wish to see in the world. We all have this darker side, not just interesting big sins, but little meannesses and fantasies and self pity that we wouldn't want anybody to know about because it's so petty. And so, but everybody has the same. We're all like that. And so that is the task. Don't be put off being a compassionate person because you've got you feel you're just ordinary and flawed.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “And this is our task day in, day out. And it's the only thing that is worth doing. It's what the world needs. It's what we need as human beings. All the things that plague us about hatreds and that we waste so much time on and jealousies and envies starts.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “And we cannot, in honesty and integrity, expect other so-called enemies to be more tolerant and compassionate if we ourselves give way to unexamined prejudice or bigotry. We have to work on ourselves first and try being a light to the people we meet every day and make their lives easier. That is our job in life. And we must develop a more global outlook so that we treat, respect all others as we would wish to be respected.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “And in the ancient world, Leviticus says, love your neighbor. And the word love was used in international treaties, two kings who may have been enemies promised that they would love each other. And that didn't mean that they would fall into one another's arms and become best friends, but that they would look out for one another's best interests. And also understanding their pain. The pain of that lies behind a lot of this anger has hardened into rage. And this is something that no society can safely ignore.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “If I just come back to this point about forgiveness, sometimes we forgive other people, but we often don't understand that we ourselves are at fault. It takes two to tango. Bad situations come about in personal life because two people aren't doing the right thing. And so that it's not just a question of forgiving, but loving our enemies. Now, when Jesus said that, he did not mean affection or tenderness. We've debased the word love in our culture. You know, I love ice cream. Didn't you love that movie?”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “and if we want a viable world it means we have to listen to one another and respect one another otherwise in the global world we've created with the weapon we've created we can't survive as a species”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Yes, yes. We can't go on like this. We can't afford to go on treating other peoples in the way we have done for short-term goals.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “So I asked Ted to help me write a charter for compassion. It was written by leading activists and thinkers in six major world faiths. And now it's becoming a sort of global movement to bring compassion back into public and private life.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “And here are the religions talking about homosexuality or doctrines. And this is what they should be talking about. The ethos of compassion, which is the task of our time. So I...”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “Yup, I won the TED Prize in 2008, and they give you a wish for a better world, which they will make happen. And I was getting frustrated that there's the world in the state it's in.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “Slaves obeying master. Yes, yes. Exactly. We are reading our scriptures today with the literalness that has no parallel in history. It's because of our literal mindset. And before people listened to their scriptures, most of the people couldn't read. And before the invention of printing, you couldn't own your own Bible. It would be impossible to bandy all these texts around. You'd hear them. The Quran means recitation and you listen to it. And that means that you have quite a different attitude to you. You're not taking out these little bits, you read the whole of it and it's holding the whole thing in your mind, but in a much looser way.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “Yes, I think, and it's been hijacked by hardliners, I think, and also by unkindness. I think often religion is not kind. And this is a...”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “I think that we must be impelled from our spirituality. We must get out there and experience the pain of the world and realize what we don't know. We think we know it all. Religion tells us we don't know. And that's not often the way it's portrayed. We're often told we know this, that, and the other about religion. So we get into a mess.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “When we die, we come to die and we can say that perhaps the world has been a little bit better because I've lived in it, then that's the meaning of it. That was your purpose. That was your purpose.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “And that means you, if you have had a privilege in your life, then we must give something back. I must do something for my society.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “And to realize I've had such a privileged life. Unbelievable privilege compared to the vast majority of people on this planet.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “And really, what they actually know about Islam could be comfortably contained on the back of a small postcard. And we need to realize that ignorance of other people, to realize their pain.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “So you could And the trouble with her is as though you could sum up the entire complex mystery of another human being in a single sentence.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “Live in an age of information, and we think we know everything. The way we talk about one another is omniscient. You see, the trouble with her is.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “People get compassion fatigue, I think. They see, oh, not another earthquake, or else these people deserve what they get. And I think that the news should be a spiritual opportunity because we are confronted with images of suffering from all over the world like no other generation.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “I think everybody watching hearing this now. I think our perceptions haven't caught up with it. We still think we're in a special separate category or that the other, that's his problems.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “All around the globe that day, the stocks plummeted. That's right. That's right. Internationally, what happens in Afghanistan today can have repercussions politically in New York or London tomorrow? We all face the same environmental catastrophe.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “People, I think we realize that we are heading for a real mess. If you look at the environment, we're doing dreadful things to our environment. Our economies are in disaster. All the things that we thought we were certain about are shaky. And we are, whether we like it or not, linked to the other When markets fall in one part of the world”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “They We don't have certainty in this life. If you let it go and just act in this compassionate way all day and every day, you begin to lose your fear.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “It gives the people a sense of security, but it's a false sense of security. People want religion is not about giving people certainty. And in our very uncertainty, I think that that's...”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “Yes. We've got brains. We've got several kinds of brain, an old reptilian brain that is all about me for survival, getting our genes out there, running away if a tiger comes in to this studio. We're supposed to run for our lives, to flee, to fight if someone comes on our territory. If we hadn't got those urges, we wouldn't have survived as a species. We need it. But we also develop these other capacities that help us a mother to care for her young that make a mother get up every night to her crying child, however exhausted she is.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “They are. It gives you a bit of a buzz and a sense of self. And so, yes, we depend upon it. We are almost addicted to our pet hatreds.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “That is what we're supposed to be doing. And one of the things is that people don't really want to be compassionate. We depend upon pet hates and our dislikes. They give us our sense themselves.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “It seems to me a great tragedy that the world religions which have got this recipe for to heal the troubles of our time. The main task of our time is to build a global society where peoples of all persuasions, all ethnicities can live together in mutual respect. The religions have got this, and yet you don't hear about it when you...”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “And what the Buddhists say is that it's our identification with ourselves that gives us such pain. When we wake up at three in the morning and we go through all these miserable thoughts like, why have I not got what so-and-so has? Why it's always me, all this self-pity, we lash ourselves out. We think we have a hard time. No one understands us. No one loves us as we should be loved. It's all me. And that's what makes us miserable the world, according to me. Yes. And when you remember that everybody else has this pain too, the one thing we know in the world that every human being, however fortunate or happy he or she is, has pain.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “It's not real. Once you do it, everything falls into place. You see, and I think the fact that every single one of the world faiths has developed this ethos of the Golden Rule separately from one another, independently, and said this is what brings us to Nirvana or to God. They did it because it worked.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “More Christian. Oh Christian. Yes. Confucius was the first person to formulate the golden rule as far as we know, 500 years before Christ. And they said his disciples said, Master, which of your teachings can we put into practice all day and every day? And he said, never treat others as you would not like to be treated yourself. I think that all the faiths have come to tell us this, that this is what works that if you people have found that if you do all day and every day, look into you as the Golden Rule says, look into your own heart, discover what gives you pain, and then refuse under any circumstance whatsoever to inflict that pain on anybody else. Somehow you achieve new capacities of mind and heart, just as a dancer who practices and practices and practices for years. So if you're practicing,”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “And Hillel said, that which is hateful to you do not do to your fellow man. That is the Torah, and everything else is only commentary. Oh, I love that. I love that. So it's a provocative statement. But if you get compassion right, you get the rest of it. And that is true.”

    2018-12-26 · Oprah's Super Soul · Karen Armstrong: Steps to a Compassionate Life, Part 2 · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source