“The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the desire for personal independence - these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it.” Albert Einstein

A selection of quotes from Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory. Rabbi Sacks, who passed on Novermber 7, 2020, was a British Orthodox rabbi, philosopher, theologian, author and politician.

“For Judaism, the criterion of the good society is not wealth, power or prowess but the simple question: does it respect the individual as the image of God?” Radical Then, Radical Now (2004)

“Non-Jews respect Jews who respect Judaism, and they are embarrassed by Jews who are embarrassed by Judaism.” Radical Then, Radical Now(2004)

“There is no life without a task; no person without a talent; no place without a fragment of God’s light waiting to be discovered and redeemed; no situation without its possibility of sanctification; no moment without its call.” To Heal a Fractured World(2007)

“You achieve immortality not by building pyramids or statues – but by engraving your values on the hearts of your children, and they on their theirs, so that our ancestors live on in us and we in our children, and so on until the end of time.” The Chief Rabbis’ Haggadah(2003)

“Making a blessing over life is the best way of turning life into a blessing.” Celebrating Life: Finding Happiness in Unexpected Places(2004)

“The very existence of Israel is as near to a miracle as we will find in the sober pages of empirical history.” Future Tense: Jews, Judaism and Israel in the Twenty First Century(2012)

“The supreme religious challenge is to see God’s image in one who is not in our image.” The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations(2003)

“Love is what redeems us from the prison cell of the self and all the sickness to which the narcissist self is prone – from empty pride to deep depression to a sense of nihilism and the abyss.” The Great Partnership: Science, Religion and the Search for Meaning(2012)

“The more friendship I share, the more I have. The more love I give, the more I possess. The best way to learn something is to teach it to others.” Celebrating Life: Finding Happiness in Unexpected Places(2004)

Quotes from Golda Mier

1. "Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement."

2. "It is true we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them.
We don't want victories anymore."

3. "We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us."

4. "My dear, old age is like an airplane flying in a storm. Once you're in it there's nothing you can do. You can't stop a plane, you can't stop a storm, you can't stop time. So you might as well take it easy, with wisdom."

5. "A man who does not hate war is not fully human."

6. "We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go."

7. "Let me tell you the one thing I have against Moses. He took us forty years into the desert in order to bring us to the one place in the Middle East that has no oil!"

8. "We owe a responsibility not only to those who are in Israel but also to those generations that are no more, to those millions who have died within our lifetime, to Jews all over the world, and to generations of Jews to come.
We hate war. We do not rejoice in victories. We rejoice when a new kind of cotton is grown, and when strawberries bloom in Israel."

9. Don't be so humble, you aren't that great.

Comments on The Chosen People

Winston S. Churchill: "Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and most remarkable race which has appeared in the world.

John F. Kennedy: Israel was not created in order to disappear- Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.

David Ben Gurion: "In Israel , in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles."

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: "Energy is the basis of everything. Every Jew, no matter how insignificant, is engaged in some decisive and immediate pursuit of a goal... It is the most perpetual people of the earth...

John Adams: "I will insist the Hebrews have [contributed] more to civilize men than any other nation. If I was an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations... They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their empire were but a bubble in comparison to the Jews."

Leo Tolstoy: "What is the Jew?...What kind of unique creature is this whom all the rulers of all the nations of the world have disgraced and crushed and expelled and destroyed; persecuted, burned and drowned, and who, despite their anger and their fury, continues to live and to flourish. What is this Jew whom they have never succeeded in enticing with all the enticements in the world, whose oppressors and persecutors only suggested that he deny (and disown) his religion and cast aside the faithfulness of his ancestors?! The Jew - is the symbol of eternity. ... He is the one who for so long had guarded the prophetic message and transmitted it to all mankind. A people such as this can never disappear. The Jew is eternal. He is the embodiment of eternity."

Eric Hoffer: "The Jews are a peculiar people: Things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it.Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese--and no one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel , the displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees. Everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab. Arnold Toynbee calls the displacement of the Arabs an atrocity greater than any committed by the Nazis. Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world."

Mark Twain: "...If statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and had done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it.

The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed; and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?"

Chaim Potok's Address to the Graduating Class of 1992, Juniata College

If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are also way out of proportion to his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain and be excused for it. The Egyptian the Babylonian and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and progressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality? Mark Twain 1899


"Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and the most remarkable race which has appeared in the world." Winston Churchill


"The Jew is that sacred being who has brought down from heaven the everlasting fire, and has illumined with it the entire world. He is the religious source, spring, and fountain out of which all the rest of the peoples have drawn their beliefs and their religions." Leo Tolstoy


"It was in vain that we locked them up for several hundred years behind the walls of the Ghetto. No sooner were their prison gates unbarred than they easily caught up with us, even on those paths which we opened up without their aid." A. A. Leroy Beaulieu, French publicist, 1842


"The Jew gave us the Outside and the Inside - our outlook and our inner life. We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best words, in fact - new, adventure, surprise, unique, individual, person, vocation, time, history, future, freedom, progress, spirit, faith, hope, justice - are the gifts of the Jews." Thomas Cahill, Irish Author


"One of the gifts of the Jewish culture to Christianity is that it has taught Christians to think like Jews, and any modern man who has not learned to think as though he were a Jew can hardly be said to have learned to think at all." William Rees-Mogg, former Editor-in-Chief for The Times of London and a member of the House of Lords

"It is certain that in certain parts of the world we can see a peculiar people, separated from the other peoples of the world and this is called the Jewish people. This people are not only of remarkable antiquity but has also lasted for a singular long time. For whereas the people of Greece and Italy, of Sparta, Athens and Rome and others who came so much later have perished so long ago, these still exist, despite the efforts of so many powerful kings who have tried a hundred times to wipe them out, as their historians testify, and as can easily be judged by the natural order of things over such a long spell of years. They have always been preserved, however, and their preservation was foretold... My encounter with this people amazes me..." Blaise Pascal, French Mathematician


"The Jewish vision became the prototype for many similar grand designs for humanity both divine and man-made. The Jews, therefore, stand at the center of the perennial attempt to give human life the dignity of a purpose." Paul Johnson, American Historian

"If there is any honor in all the world that I should like, it would be to be an honorary Jewish citizen." A.L Rowse, authority on Shakespeare


"As long as the world lasts, all who want to make progress in righteousness will come to Israel for inspiration as to the people who had the sense for righteousness most glowing and strongest." Matthew Arnold, British poet and critic

"Indeed it is difficult for all other nations of the world to live in the presence of the Jews. It is irritating and most uncomfortable. The Jews embarrass the world as they have done things which are beyond the imaginable. They have become moral strangers since the day their forefather, Abraham, introduced the world to high ethical standards and to the fear of Heaven. They brought the world the Ten Commandments, which many nations prefer to defy. They violated the rules of history by staying alive, totally at odds with common sense and historical evidence. They outlived all their former enemies, including vast empires such as the Romans and the Greeks. They angered the world with their return to their homeland after 2000 years of exile and after the murder of six million of their brothers and sisters. They aggravated mankind by building, in the wink of an eye, a democratic State which others were not able to create in even hundreds of years. They built living monuments such as the duty to be holy and the privilege to serve one's fellow man. They had their hands in every human progressive endeavor, whether in science, medicine, psychology or any other discipline, while totally out of proportion to their actual numbers. They gave the world the Bible and even their "savior." Jews taught the world not to accept the world as it is, but to transform it, yet only a few nations wanted to listen. Moreover, the Jews introduced the world to one God, yet only a minority wanted to draw the moral consequences. So the nations of the world realize that they would have been lost without the Jews. And while their subconscious tries to remind them of how much of Western civilization is framed in terms of concepts first articulated by the Jews, they do anything to suppress it. They deny that Jews remind them of a higher purpose of life and the need to be honorable, and do anything to escape its consequences. It is simply too much to handle for them, too embarrassing to admit, and above all, too difficult to live by. So the nations of the world decided once again to go out of 'their' way in order to find a stick to hit the Jews. The goal: to prove that Jews are as immoral and guilty of massacre and genocide as some of they themselves are. All this in order to hide and justify their own failure to even protest when six million Jews were brought to the slaughterhouses of Auschwitz and Dachau; so as to wipe out the moral conscience of which the Jews remind them, and they found a stick. Nothing could be more gratifying for them than to find the Jews in a struggle with another people (who are completely terrorized by their own leaders) against whom the Jews, against their best wishes, have to defend themselves in order to survive. With great satisfaction, the world allows and initiates the rewriting of history so as to fuel the rage of yet another people against the Jews. This in spite of the fact that the nations understand very well that peace between the parties could have come a long time ago, if only the Jews would have had a fair chance. Instead, they happily jumped on the wagon of hate so as to justify their jealousy of the Jews and their incompetence to deal with their own moral issues When Jews look at the bizarre play taking place in The Hague, they can only smile as this artificial game once more proves how the world paradoxically admits the Jews' uniqueness. It is in their need to undermine the Jews that they actually raise them. The study of history of Europe during the past centuries teaches us one uniform lesson: That the nations which received and in any way dealt fairly and mercifully with the Jew have prospered; and that the nations that have tortured and oppressed them have written out their own curse." Olive Schreiner, South African novelist and social activist

Jewish Proverbs and Direct Quotes

If the rich could hire other people to die for them, the poor could make a wonderful living.
Yiddish Proverb

The wise man, even when he holds his tongue, says more than the fool when he speaks.
Yiddish Proverb

What you don't see with your eyes, don't invent with your mouth.
Yiddish proverb

A hero is someone who can keep his mouth shut when he is right.
Yiddish Proverb

One old friend is better than two new ones.
Yiddish Proverb

One of life's greatest mysteries is how the boy who wasn't good enough to marry your daughter can be the father of the smartest grandchild in the world.
Jewish Proverb

A wise man hears one word and understands two.
Yiddish Proverb

"Don't be so humble - you are not that great."
Golda Meir (1898-1978) to a visiting diplomat

“Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.”
Golda Meir

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex.
It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.“
Albert Einstein

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.”
Albert Einstein

“Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.” Albert Einstein

You can't control the wind, but you can adjust your sails.
Yiddish proverb

“I don't want to become immortal through my work. I want to become
Immortal through not dying.”
Woody Allen

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton .

“We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
Albert Einstein

"Surely something must be terribly wrong with a man who seems to be far more concerned with a Jew building a house in Israel than with Muslims building a nuclear bomb in Iran." - Columnist Burt Prelutsky.

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." - Leo Tolstoy

"The world is comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of on of its beings." - Martin Buber

"People’s good deeds are used by the Eternal as seeds for planting trees in the Garden of Eden: thus, each of us creates our own Paradise." - The Mereritzer Rebbe 

"When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." - Abraham Maslow

"Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either." - Golda Meir

"If I try to be like him, who will be like me?" - Yiddish Proverb

"To pull a man out of the mud, a friend must set foot in the mud." - Rabbi Nachman of Bretslav

"I have come to believe that after the Holocaust there is no place for ambivalent Jewishness." - Erica Jong

"In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank

"In any free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty – all are responsible." - Abraham Joshua Heshel

"Nobody is ever impoverished through the giving of charity." - Moses Maimonides

"He who recites a blessing is blessed himself." - The Talmud

"Social justice should have nothing to do with personal likes and dislikes." - Sam Levenson

"What’s a Jewish sweater?  It is the garment worn by a child when his mother is cold." - Unkown

"Where all men think alike, no one thinks very much." - Walter Lippmann

"Youth is the gift of nature, but age is work of art." - Garson Kanin

"There are only two ways to live your life.  One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is a miracle." - Albert Einstein

"I feel that the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more." - Jonah Salk