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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

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Karen Armstrong
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: November 14
Author
Historian Of Religion
Islamicist
Theologian
University Teacher
Writer
Worcs
People
Religion
Stubborn
Often
Popular
Look
Keys
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Compassion
Sometimes
Virtue
Important
Talk
Sine
Much
Religious
Disapprove
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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.
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You put yourself in the receptive frame of mind with which we approach music or poetry, which you can measure the difference on a neurological scanner.
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For centuries, the Muslims were able to co-exist perfectly well with Jews and Christians in the Middle East.
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Fundamentalists are not friends of democracy. And that includes your fundamentalists in the United States.
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...there is something wrong with any spirituality that does not inspire selfless concern for others
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If professional religious leaders can [no longer] instruct..., our artists and creative writers can perhaps step into this priestly role and bring fresh insight to our lost and damaged world.
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I learned a lot from both, initially Jewish and Muslim theologians that had been missing, perhaps from my rather parochial Catholic upbringing.
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Creation stories had never been regarded as historically accurate their purpose was therapeutic. But once you start reading Genesis as scientifically valid, you have bad science and bad religion.
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Sometimes I call myself a freelance, I can't see any one of the great religions as superior to others.
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Geniuses are not always pleasant people.
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My greatest solace is my study. If I am deprived of my study, I can become lost, unhappy and unhinged.
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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.
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And so, one of the reasons why I started my Charter for Compassion, was to bring the Golden Rule back to the center of religion and morality and not put other's secondary goals, less demand goals, into the forefront.
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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.
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The first person to promulgate the Golden Rule, which was the bedrock of this empathic spirituality, was Confucius 500 years before Christ.
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You are your best self when you give yourself away.
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You have to get into the water and learn against what seems to be the law gravity to float and dancing, or athletics takes you years before you develop a skill. But if you work at it, practicing daily, you can enable your body to do things that are utterly impossible to an untrained physic.
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Beethoven's string quartets express pain itself it is not MY pain.
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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.
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