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" All religions are designed to teach us how to live, joyfully, serenely, and kindly, in the midst of suffering. "
Karen Armstrong
Religions
Teach
Us
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" The hajj is one of the five essential practices of Islam; when they make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims ritually act out the central principles of their faith. "
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" Buddhists talk about nirvana in very much the same terms as monotheists describe God. "
Karen Armstrong
Describe
Much
Nirvana
" Ever since the Crusades, when Christians from western Europe were fighting holy wars against Muslims in the near east, western people have often perceived Islam as a violent and intolerant faith - even though when this prejudice took root Islam had a better record of tolerance than Christianity. "
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" I have a very sharp tongue, I'm very impatient, and it's a lifelong struggle. "
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Very
Impatient
Sharp
" After I left the convent, for 15 years I was worn out with religion, I wanted nothing whatever to do with it. I felt disgusted with it. If I saw someone reading a religious book on a train, I'd think, how awful. "
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Book
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" I am not interested in the afterlife. Religion is supposed to be about losing your ego, not preserving it eternally in optimum conditions. "
Karen Armstrong
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Ego
Losing
" Well, logos is science or reason, something that helps us to function practically and effectively in the world, and it must therefore be closely in tune and reflect accurately the realities of the world around us. "
Karen Armstrong
World
Reason
Us
" Ironically, the first thing that appealed to me about Islam was its pluralism. The fact that the Koran praises all the great prophets of the past. "
Karen Armstrong
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Fact
" If we want to create a viable, peaceful world, we've got to integrate compassion into the gritty realities of 21st century life. "
Karen Armstrong
Peaceful
Life
Compassion
" Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they don't want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity. "
Karen Armstrong
Ego
Want
Religion
" I have nothing maternal in me, and men want to be mothered a lot of the time. "
Karen Armstrong
Men
Nothing
Time
" I was a lousy nun. I couldn't do it. I couldn't find God. It wasn't suitable for me. It is suitable for very few people. "
Karen Armstrong
Few
People
Nun
" Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion is the key, that it's the sine-qua-non of religion, people look kind of balked, and stubborn sometimes, as much to say, what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people? "
Karen Armstrong
People
Look
Compassion
" Compassion is a practically acquired knowledge, like dancing. You must do it and practice diligently day by day. "
Karen Armstrong
Knowledge
Day
Compassion
" In the holy city of Mecca, violence of any kind was forbidden. From the moment they left home, pilgrims were not permitted to carry weapons, to swat an insect or speak an angry word, a discipline that introduced them to a new way of living. "
Karen Armstrong
City
Home
Angry
" Fundamentalists are not friends of democracy. And that includes your fundamentalists in the United States. "
Karen Armstrong
Friends
Your
United States
" Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied later Christians. He went around doing good and being compassionate. "
Karen Armstrong
Good
Great
Doing
" It's a great event to get outside and enjoy nature. I find it very exciting no matter how many times I see bald eagles. "
Karen Armstrong
Bald
See
Great
" Now I think one of the reasons why religion developed in the way that it did over the centuries was precisely to curb this murderous bent that we have as human beings. "
Karen Armstrong
Why
Think
Way
" In the past some of the most influential Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians, such as Maimonides, Aquinas and Ibn Sina, made it clear that it was very difficult to speak about God, because when we confront the ultimate, we are at the end of what words or thoughts can do. "
Karen Armstrong
God
Thoughts
Words
" Alas, all traditions lose their primal purity and we all fail our founders. "
Karen Armstrong
Alas
Purity
Traditions
" Storytelling is fine as long as you can encourage people to act on the stories. "
Karen Armstrong
Storytelling
You
Stories
" 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
Well
Success
Failure
" Compassion is the key in Islam and Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity. They are profoundly similar. "
Karen Armstrong
Similar
Compassion
Key
" Every fundamentalist movement I've studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced at some gut, visceral level that secular liberal society wants to wipe out religion. "
Karen Armstrong
Religion
Islam
Liberal
" Today we often think that before we start living a religious life we have first to accept the creedal doctrines and that before one can have any comprehension of the loyalty and trust of faith, one must first force one's mind to accept a host of incomprehensible doctrines. But this is to put the cart before the horse. "
Karen Armstrong
Today
Faith
Life
" We are addicted to our egotism, our likes and dislikes and prejudices, and depend upon them for our own sense of identity. "
Karen Armstrong
Identity
Egotism
Depend
" Yes, all fundamentalists feel that in a secular society, God has been relegated to the margin, to the periphery and they are all in different ways seeking to drag him out of that peripheral position, back to center stage. "
Karen Armstrong
God
Yes
Stage
" For centuries, the Muslims were able to co-exist perfectly well with Jews and Christians in the Middle East. "
Karen Armstrong
Jews
Able
Middle
" Well, the idea of God as a supreme being means that he is simply like us, writ large, and just bigger and better, the end product of the series; whereas this divine personality that we meet in the Bible was, for centuries, regarded simply as a symbol of a greater transcendence that lay beyond it. "
Karen Armstrong
Personality
Better
God