Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" Compassion is a practically acquired knowledge, like dancing. You must do it and practice diligently day by day. "
Karen Armstrong
Knowledge
Day
Compassion
Related Quotes:
" 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
Me
Past
Fact
" 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
" I have nothing maternal in me, and men want to be mothered a lot of the time. "
Karen Armstrong
Men
Nothing
Time
" Mythology and science both extend the scope of human beings. Like science and technology, mythology, as we shall see, is not about opting out of this world, but about enabling us to live more intensely within it. "
Karen Armstrong
Science
See
Technology
" Zionism was originally a rebellion against religious Judaism and the PLO Charter was essentially secularist. But because the conflict was allowed to fester without a resolution, religion got sucked into the escalating cycle of violence and became part of the problem. "
Karen Armstrong
Religion
Problem
Conflict
" Alas, all traditions lose their primal purity and we all fail our founders. "
Karen Armstrong
Alas
Purity
Traditions
" Religions have always stressed that compassion is not only central to religious life, it is the key to enlightenment and it the true test of spirituality. But there have always have been those who'd rather put easier goals, like doctrine conformity, in place. "
Karen Armstrong
Compassion
Place
Goals
" I have a very sharp tongue, I'm very impatient, and it's a lifelong struggle. "
Karen Armstrong
Very
Impatient
Sharp
" 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
" 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. "
Karen Armstrong
Islam
Out
Principles
" Even before 9/11 I was gripped by a sense of dread: our lack of criticism about what we were doing in the Middle East - the slagging off of a whole religious tradition. "
Karen Armstrong
Off
Criticism
Doing
" Pain is something that's common to human life. When we ignore it, we aren't engaging in the whole reality, and the pain begins to fester. "
Karen Armstrong
Human
Life
Pain
" I believe in holiness and sacredness in other people. It doesn't mean that the clouds part and I see God. That's a juvenile way of thinking about it. "
Karen Armstrong
Believe
Thinking
People
" The values of Islam are expressed by Muslims clearly. September 11 changed the world, and put Muslims on the spotlight. "
Karen Armstrong
Islam
Changed
World
" When violence becomes imbedded in a region, then this affects everything. It affects your dreams, your fantasies and relationships, and your religion becomes violent, too. "
Karen Armstrong
Violence
Religion
Your Dreams
" Today mythical thinking has fallen into disrepute; we often dismiss it as irrational and self-indulgent. But the imagination is also the faculty that has enabled scientists to bring new knowledge to light and to invent technology that has made us immeasurably more effective. "
Karen Armstrong
New
Today
Knowledge
" 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
" Buddhists talk about nirvana in very much the same terms as monotheists describe God. "
Karen Armstrong
Describe
Much
Nirvana
" 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
" Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious concept. "
Karen Armstrong
Search
Religion
External
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Karen Armstrong
Train
Book
Think
" There is a danger in monotheism, and it's called idolatry. And we know the prophets of Israel were very, very concerned about idolatry, the worship of a human expression of the divine. "
Karen Armstrong
Worship
Know
Human
" Let's use our stories to encourage listening to one another and to hear not just the good news, but also the pain that lies at the back of a lot of people's stories and histories. "
Karen Armstrong
Good
Listening
Pain
" Compassion is not a popular virtue. "
Karen Armstrong
Compassion
Virtue
Popular
" 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
" There are some forms of religion that are bad, just as there's bad cooking or bad art or bad sex, you have bad religion too. "
Karen Armstrong
Sex
Religion
Cooking
" Compassion doesn't, of course, mean feeling sorry for people, or pity, which is how the word has become emasculated in a way. "
Karen Armstrong
Sorry
People
Feeling
" 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