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Everything that goes up must come down: that is a law of life, so to strengthen your enemy by yielding to him would actually hasten his decline. The
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Karen Armstrong |
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The good leader in war is not warlike The good fighter is not impetuous; The best conqueror of the enemy is he who never takes the offensive. The man who gets the most out of men is the one who treats them with humility.3 Tyrants
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Karen Armstrong |
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Disputes that were secular in origin, such as the Arab-Israeli conflict, have been allowed to fester and become "holy," and once they have been sacralized, positions tend to harden and become resistant to pragmatic solutions."
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Karen Armstrong |
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true insight does not consist of the acquisition of information but comes from mastering our egotism and greed.5
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Karen Armstrong |
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Martin Luther King Jr. believed that the highest point of Jesus's life was the moment when he forgave his executioners,
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Karen Armstrong |
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By using feminist arguments, for which most had little or no sympathy, as part of their propaganda, the colonialists tainted the cause of feminism in the Muslim world, and helped to distort the faith by introducing an imbalance that had not existed before.83 The
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Karen Armstrong |
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There was a growing conviction that religion had to become as rational as modern science.
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Karen Armstrong |
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When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost with no means of escape..
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Karen Armstrong |
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A double standard, albeit unintended, violates our integrity and damages our credibility. In a global society, conflict is rarely the fault of only one party.
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Karen Armstrong |
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The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.1
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Karen Armstrong |
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One of the chief tasks of our time must surely be to build a global community in which all peoples can live together in mutual respect; yet religion, which should be making a major contribution, is seen as part of the problem.
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Karen Armstrong |
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But Christina never forgot that "when I was a child, I needed only one person to understand my suffering and pain.... One is very important."5"
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Karen Armstrong |
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what Tibetan Buddhists call "the inability to bear the sight of another's sorrow," so that we feel it almost as intensely as we feel our own. We"
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Karen Armstrong |
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the moral and spiritual imperatives of religion are important for humanity and should not be relegated unthinkingly to the scrap heap of history in the interests of an unfettered rationalism.
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Karen Armstrong |
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Fundamentalist faith was rooted in deep fear and anxiety that could not be assuaged by a purely rational argument.
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Karen Armstrong |
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we sometimes fail to recognize the signs of poverty, loneliness, grief, fear, and desolation in our own city, our own village, or our own family.
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Karen Armstrong |
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Suffering and want are no longer confined to distant, disadvantaged parts of the globe.
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Karen Armstrong |
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It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others--even our enemies--is a denial of our common humanity.
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Karen Armstrong |
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cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings--even those regarded as enemies.
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Karen Armstrong |
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compassion" derives from the Latin patiri and the Greek pathein, meaning "to suffer, undergo, or experience." So "compassion" means "to endure [something] with another person," to put ourselves in somebody else's shoes,"
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Karen Armstrong |
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the Golden Rule, which asks us to look into our own hearts, discover what gives us pain, and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.
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Karen Armstrong |
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Compassion can be defined, therefore, as an attitude of principled, consistent altruism. The
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Karen Armstrong |
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in a foreign language. Linguists have called this epistemological law the "principle of charity"; it requires that when we are confronted with discourse that is strange to us, we seek an "interpretation which, in the light of what it knows of the facts, will maximise truth among the sentences of the corpus."11" --
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Karen Armstrong |
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De vroege christenen geloofden dat het hun voornaamste plicht was om elkaar lief te hebben, maar ze stelden zich niet open voor vreemdelingen. Deze gemeenschap voelde zich aangevallen en klitte samen tegen 'de wereld'. Sommige van hun leden hadden hun leer onverdraaglijk gevonden en 'gingen niet verder met Jezus mee'. De gelovingen zagen deze afvalligen als 'antichristenen', vervuld van een dodelijke haat jegens de messias. De leden van dez..
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Karen Armstrong |
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it is important to assume that the speaker shares the same human nature as yourself and that, even though your belief systems may differ, you both have the same idea of what constitutes truth.
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Karen Armstrong |
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Charity," Davidson continues, "is forced on us, whether we like it or not; if we want to understand others, we must count them right in most matters."13"
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Karen Armstrong |
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The "principle of charity" and the "science of compassion" are both crucial to any attempt to understand discourse and ideas that initially seem baffling, distressing, and alien;"
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Karen Armstrong |
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Jezus, de Logos, zou de functie van de verwoeste tempel overnemen en de plaats waar de joden de goddelijke aanwezigheid konden ontmoeten[...]. Het jodendom en zijn heiligste symbolen waren vervangen door een triomfantelijk, strijdbaar christendom. Er loopt een spoor van haat door het Nieuwe Testament. Het is niet juist om de christelijke Bijbel te kenschetsen als antisemitisch want de schrijvers waren zelf joden.
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Karen Armstrong |
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You could stamp on this natural shoot of compassion, Mencius argued, just as you can cripple or deform your body, but if you cultivate this altruistic tendency assiduously, it will acquire a dynamic power of its own.23 The
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Karen Armstrong |
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people are finding that in their dramatically transformed circumstances, the old forms of faith no longer work for them: they cannot provide the enlightenment and consolation that human beings seem to need.
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Karen Armstrong |
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Unless we find some significance in our lives, we mortal men and women fall very easily into despair.
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Karen Armstrong |
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De rabbijnen wezen er graag op dat koning Salomo ter verklaring van elk vers van de Tora 3000 gelijkenissen gebruikte en dat hij van elke gelijkenis 1005 interpretaties kon geven. Dit betekende dat er 3 015 000 verklaringen waren voor elk stukje tekst. Een tekst die niet radicaal geherinterpreteerd kon worden om de actuele behoeften te bevredigen was dan ook dood.
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Karen Armstrong |
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we have come to depend on the instant rush of energy and delight we feel when we display our cleverness by making an unkind remark and the spurt of triumph when we vanquish an annoying colleague. Thus do we assert ourselves and tell the world who we are. It is difficult to break a habit upon which we depend for our sense of self.
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Karen Armstrong |
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At their best, all religious, philosophical, and ethical traditions are based on the principle of compassion. I
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Karen Armstrong |
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We are trying to retrain our responses and form mental habits that are kinder, gentler, and less fearful of others.
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Karen Armstrong |
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A myth has been well described as something that in some sense happened once--but that also happens all the time. It is about timeless, universal truth. If
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Karen Armstrong |
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advocates of evolutionary theory since Thomas H. Huxley (1825-95) have found altruism problematic.
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Karen Armstrong |
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Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment.
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religion
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Karen Armstrong |
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Compassion has dropped so far out of sight these days that many are confused about what is required. It even inspires overt hostility.
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Karen Armstrong |
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Our neocortex has made us meaning-seeking creatures, acutely aware of the perplexity and tragedy of our predicament, and if we do not discover some ultimate significance in our lives, we fall easily into despair.
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Karen Armstrong |
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As the Daoists pointed out, we often identify with our ideas so strongly that we feel personally assaulted if these are criticized or corrected.
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Karen Armstrong |
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Joden moesten de Tora strikter naleven dan ooit tevoren. Het was niet langer voldoende geen moord te plegen, ze moesten ook hun woede inhouden. Niet alleen overspel was verboden, een man mocht zelfs niet begerig naar een vrouw kijken. De oude wetten van vergelding - een oog voor een oog en een tand voor een tand - werden opzij gezet: de joden moesten nu zelfs wie hen op de rechterwang sloeg, hun linkerwang toekeren en hun vijanden liefhebbe..
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Karen Armstrong |
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Understanding different national, cultural, and religious traditions is no longer a luxury; it is now a necessity and must become a priority. The
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Karen Armstrong |
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dialogue led participants not to certainty but to a shocking realization of the profundity of human ignorance. However carefully, logically, and rationally Socrates and his friends analyzed a topic, something always eluded them.
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Karen Armstrong |