English - Writer | November 14, 1944 -
We are addicted to our egotism, our likes and dislikes and prejudices, and depend upon them for our own sense of identity.
Karen Armstrong
IdentityDependOwnSenseLikesOur
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.
ReligionIdentityPeopleEgoWant
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.
GoodGreatTimeDoingDoing Good
There is a danger in monotheism, and it's called idolatry. And we know the prophets of Israel were very, very concerned about idolatry, the worship of a human expression of the divine.
KnowWorshipHumanDivineExpression
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.
GodCloudsPeopleBelieveThinking
The first person to promulgate the Golden Rule, which was the bedrock of this empathic spirituality, was Confucius 500 years before Christ.
PersonGoldenFirstGolden RuleRule
Compassion is not a popular virtue.
CompassionVirtuePopular
A theology should be like poetry, which takes us to the end of what words and thoughts can do.
WordsPoetryThoughtsEndUsLike
Storytelling is fine as long as you can encourage people to act on the stories.
PeopleLongYouStorytellingAct
I have a very sharp tongue, I'm very impatient, and it's a lifelong struggle.
StruggleTongueSharpLifelongVery
Human beings have always been mythmakers.
HumanAlwaysBeenHuman Beings
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.
LifeBeginningValueMeaningFall
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Karen Armstrong quotes