#d

Fundamentalists are not friends of democracy. And that includes your fundamentalists in the United States. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#friends #fundamentalists #includes #states #united

Alas, all traditions lose their primal purity and we all fail our founders. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#fail #founders #lose #our #primal

But human beings fall easily into despair, and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place our lives in a larger setting, that revealed an underlying pattern, and gave us a sense that, against all the depressing and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#beginning #beings #chaotic #contrary #depressing

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

#compassion #course #feeling #how #mean

Compassion is a practically acquired knowledge, like dancing. You must do it and practice diligently day by day. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#compassion #dancing #day #diligently #knowledge

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. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#better #christianity #christians #crusades #east

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 #clouds #god #holiness #i

I like silence; I'm a gregarious loner and without the solitude, I lose my gregariousness. ↗

— Karen Armstrong

#i #like #loner #lose #silence

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

#because #christian #clear #confront #difficult

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

#around #being #christians #compassionate #deal