#religion

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

#disapprove #having #how #i #important

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

#afterlife #am #conditions #ego #eternally

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 #egotism #endorse #give #identity

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

#becomes #dreams #everything #fantasies #our dreams

Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil's propagation. ↗

— Hosea Ballou

#persecution #propagation #religion #requires #sustain

If you look at U.S. history through religious history, there is very much a motif that shows the importance religion has played in the U.S. We're a very religious country and it affects the way we look at various political issues. ↗

— Madeleine Albright

#country #history #importance #issues #look

If, then, you are looking for the way by which you should go, take Christ, because He Himself is the way. ↗

— Thomas Aquinas

#because #christ #go #himself #looking

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

#convinced #every #fundamentalist #gut #i

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

#been #central #compassion #conformity #doctrine

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

#allowed #became #because #charter #conflict