Karen Armstrong Quotes About Selfishness
-
And sometimes it's the very otherness of a stranger, someone who doesn't belong to our ethnic or ideological or religious group, an otherness that can repel us initially, but which can jerk us out of our habitual selfishness, and give us intonations of that sacred otherness, which is God.
→ -
Every single one of the major world faiths, whether we're talking about Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Darwinism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have all come to the conclusion that what holds us back from our better self is ego, selfishness, greed, unkindness, hatred. And it all springs from a sense of thwarted ego.
→ -
Compassion has been advocated by all the great faiths because it has been found to be the safest and surest means of attaining enlightenment. It dethrones the ego from the center of our lives and puts others there, breaking down the carapace of the selfishness that holds us back from an experience of the sacred. And it gives us ecstasy, broadening our perspectives and giving us a larger, enhanced vision.
→ -
Deeds that seemed unimportant at the time would prove to have been momentous; a tiny act of selfishness and unkindness or, conversely, an unconsidered act of generosity would become the measure of a human life.
→
Related Authors
-
Mark Pincus Entrepreneur -
-
Huston Smith Professor -
Max Brooks Author -
Jeanette Winterson Writer -
Richard Dawkins Ethologist -
Margaret Atwood Poet -
Reza Aslan Writer -
Frank Kermode Literary critic -
Sam Harris Author -
Robert Spencer Author -
Karl Jaspers Psychiatrist -
William Montgomery Watt Historian -
Bill Griffith Cartoonist -
Christopher Hitchens Author -
Elaine Pagels Professor -
Martin Lings Writer -
-
John Shelby Spong Author -
Marcus Borg Scholar