Compassion is the key in Islam and Buddhism and Judaism and Christianity. They are profoundly similar.
Karen ArmstrongRead
Compassion doesn't, of course, mean feeling sorry for people, or pity, which is how the word has become emasculated in a way.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Compassion is a deeper understanding and connection with others, not just a superficial feeling of pity.
In this quote, Karen Armstrong highlights the distinction between genuine compassion and mere pity. While pity involves feeling sorry for someone's misfortunes, compassion requires a deeper emotional connection and an understanding of their suffering, ultimately moving towards a more constructive and supportive response rather than just a feeling of sympathy.
Themes
CompassionEmpathyUnderstandingPityConnection
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared in a discussion about the importance of empathy in social work.
More from Karen Armstrong
All quotes βYet a personal God can become a grave liability. He can be a mere idol carved in our own image, a projection of our limited needs, fears and desires. We can assume that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them.
Karen ArmstrongRead
When violence becomes imbedded in a region, then this affects everything. It affects your dreams, your fantasies and relationships, and your religion becomes violent, too.
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Far from being the father of jihad, [Prophet] Mohammad was a peacemaker, who risked his life and nearly lost the loyalty of his closest companions because he was determined to effect a reconciliation with Mecca
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Yes, all fundamentalists feel that in a secular society, God has been relegated to the margin, to the periphery and they are all in different ways seeking to drag him out of that peripheral position, back to center stage.
Karen ArmstrongRead
Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious concept.
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Churchgoers feel righteous, responsible, and obedient to God's will. They view anyone unlike themselves as devoid of values, and therefore unworthy of God's love. By denying God to all those who have strayed from the path of righteousness, the devout are unwittingly taking on themselves a role that belongs only to God.
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The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
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And what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost.
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