The discipline of compassion is the safest way to lay aside the selfishness and greed that hold us back from God and from our best selves.

These are desperate times and the world seems a dangerous place. But for the vast majority of human beings, who are not fortunate enough to live in the First World, it has always been desperate and dangerous. Very few could dream of the security and power symbolized by the towers of the World Trade Center. Now we have joined the dispossessed, but instead of resenting us, we can see it as an opportunity to effect the spiritual revolution which alone can save our troubled world.

Karen Armstrong, Walking with God in a Fragile World by James Langford, editor, Leroy S. Rouner, editor