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
Religious people often prefer to be right rather than compassionate. Often, they dont want to give up their egotism. They want their religion to endorse their ego, their identity. – Karen Armstrong
In the holy city of Mecca, violence of any kind was forbidden. From the moment they left home, pilgrims were not permitted to carry weapons, to swat an insect or speak an angry word, a discipline that introduced them to a new way of living. – Karen Armstrong
Compassion is a practically acquired knowledge, like dancing. You must do it and practice diligently day by day. – Karen Armstrong
Take the so-called standard of living. What do most people mean by “living”? They don’t mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science, in its finite but unbounded wisdom, has succeeded in selling their wives. – e.e. cummings, Introduction, Poems, 1954