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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 7be43b5 | Unless we find some significance in our lives, we mortal men and women fall very easily into despair. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| ea8429b | 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. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 4a06a7c | 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. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 011e292 | At their best, all religious, philosophical, and ethical traditions are based on the principle of compassion. I | Karen Armstrong | ||
| bfc8f1d | We are trying to retrain our responses and form mental habits that are kinder, gentler, and less fearful of others. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 15a4719 | 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 | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 831064a | advocates of evolutionary theory since Thomas H. Huxley (1825-95) have found altruism problematic. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 1c5e5f7 | Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment. | religion | Karen Armstrong | |
| 2b06363 | Compassion has dropped so far out of sight these days that many are confused about what is required. It even inspires overt hostility. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 098dfb3 | 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. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 16143d5 | As the Daoists pointed out, we often identify with our ideas so strongly that we feel personally assaulted if these are criticized or corrected. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 91e37f5 | 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.. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 906bce8 | Understanding different national, cultural, and religious traditions is no longer a luxury; it is now a necessity and must become a priority. The | Karen Armstrong | ||
| b8662ee | 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. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| e644336 | if we harm our neighbors, we also inflict damage on ourselves. There | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 18ffee2 | You entered into a Socratic dialogue in order to change; the object of the exercise was to create a new, more authentic self. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 42e26d2 | if they did not interrogate their most fundamental beliefs, they would live superficial, expedient lives, because "the unexamined life is not worth living."7" | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 7ca38a6 | it is neither helpful nor accurate to assume that other people are always responsible for our pain. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| d9863de | People who have been taught to despise themselves cannot easily respect others. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 68d54e1 | We should also make ourselves aware that our cultural, ethical, religious, and intellectual traditions have all been profoundly affected by other peoples'. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 65c433b | As we have seen, so many of the things we once took for granted have proved unreliable that we may have to "forget" old ways of thought in order to meet the current challenges." | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 58aec9d | The philosopher Karl Popper (1902-94) often remarked "We don't know anything" and believed that this was the most important philosophical truth.16" | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 2a1391f | One of the many great sources of happiness is to get a glimpse, here and there, of a new aspect of the incredible world we live in and of our incredible role in it."17" | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 424043c | To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself to us as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms--this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of all true religiousness. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 5b0b911 | The aim of this step is threefold: (1) to recognize and appreciate the unknown and unknowable, (2) to become sensitive to overconfident assertions of certainty in ourselves and other people, and (3) to make ourselves aware of the numinous mystery of each human being we encounter during the day. First, | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 3a62e8f | What do you think Socrates meant when he said, "The unexamined life is not worth living"? Third," | Karen Armstrong | ||
| fe7b8f5 | In your mindfulness practice, notice how often, without thinking, you try to manipulate, control, or exploit others--sometimes in tiny and apparently unimportant ways. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 1dac33a | The Socratic dialogue was a spiritual exercise designed to produce a profound psychological change in the participants, and because its purpose was that each person should understand the depth of his ignorance, there was no way that anybody could win. Plato | Karen Armstrong | ||
| c5351e0 | we may need to find a way of posing Socratic questions that lead to personal insight rather than simply repeating the facts as we see them yet again. We | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 4e8f632 | True listening means more than simply hearing the words that are spoken. We have to become alert to the underlying message too and hear what is not uttered aloud. Angry | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 7e3be29 | But aggression, righteous condemnation, and insult only make matters worse. Somehow we have to break the escalating cycle of attack and counterattack. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 5058211 | The implications for politics were immense. If instead of ruthlessly pursuing his own self-interest to the detriment of others, a ruler would "curb his ego and submit to li for a single day," Confucius believed, "everyone under Heaven would respond to his goodness!" -- | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 0fcd3d7 | I have never seen faces, but because I have looked people in the eye, only their gazes. | Arnold Schoenberg | ||
| ce65a12 | My music is not lovely. | Arnold Schoenberg | ||
| 30bee5e | Muhammad had become the head of a collection of tribal groups that were not bound together by blood but by a shared ideology, an astonishing innovation in Arabian society. Nobody was forced to convert to the religion of the Quran, but Muslims, pagans and Jews all belonged to one ummah, could not attack one another, and vowed to give each other protection. News of this extraordinary new 'supertribe' spread, and though at the outset nobody th.. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| f3d8efd | It did seem unjust that Jane, who was by far the abler of the two, should sacrifice her career for Mark's. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 7f3293d | inhabitants of countries that were colonized by the Europeans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries knew how profoundly distressing it was to watch a cherished way of life disappearing and beloved traditions decried by powerful, disdainful foreigners. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 60e490b | Religious people prefer to be right rather than be compassionate. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 83efb0f | Quraysh, who had shown throughout the day that they were still in thrall to the overbearing haughtiness and intransigence of the jahiliyyah, a stubborn resistance to anything that might injure their sense of honor or their traditional way of life. They had even been ready to massacre the innocent unarmed pilgrims rather than accept the "humiliation" of admitting them to the Haram. When in the hearts of those who persist in unbelief arose th.. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 43ed4e8 | Why do you observe the splinter in your brother's eye and never notice the plank in your own? | Karen Armstrong | ||
| d2ec6d3 | If we are to avoid catastrophe, the Muslim and Western worlds must learn not merely to tolerate but to appreciate one another. A good place to start is with the figure of Muhammad: a complex man, who resists facile, ideologically-driven categorization, who sometimes did things that were difficult or impossible for us to accept, but who had profound genius and founded a religion and cultural tradition that was not based on the sword but whos.. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| 56394a3 | In the Quranic vision there is no dichotomy between the sacred and the profane, the religious and the political, sexuality and worship. The whole of life was potentially holy and had to be brought into the ambit of the divine. The aim was tawhid (making one), the integration of the whole of life in a unified community, which would give Muslims intimations of the Unity which is God. | Karen Armstrong | ||
| c50407c | A disorderly spirituality that makes the practitioner dreamy, eccentric, or uncontrolled is a very bad sign indeed. In | Karen Armstrong | ||
| edbd365 | Muhammad's numerous wives have occasioned a good deal of prurient interest in the West, but it would be a mistake to imagine the Prophet basking decadently in sensual delight, like some of the later Islamic rulers. In Mecca, Muhammad had remained monogamous, married only to Khadija, even though polygamy was common in Arabia. Khadija was a good deal older than he, but bore him at least six children, of whom only four daughters survived. In M.. | reading | Karen Armstrong |