Compassion is not feeling sorry for others. It's not soft. It requires an intellectual effort.
Karen ArmstrongEven before 9/11 I was gripped by a sense of dread: our lack of criticism about what we were doing in the Middle East - the slagging off of a whole religious tradition.
Karen ArmstrongHere in America, religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. They've lost the Axial Age vision of concern for everybody.
Karen ArmstrongWell, logos is science or reason, something that helps us to function practically and effectively in the world, and it must therefore be closely in tune and reflect accurately the realities of the world around us.
Karen ArmstrongBut 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