Jonathan Israel Quotes

Israel's monomaniacal Spinoza worship is amusing and exasperating by turns. For a start, his insistence that Spinoza was the singular font of the Enlightenment leaves him without a story of the Enlightenment's intellectual or cultural origins. Every historian has to begin somewhere, but the fact that Israel begins with Spinoza, and then reduces most of what follows the philosopher to a footnote, leaves his account of the Enlightenment founded on something like immaculate conception. ~ Samuel Moyn

Closure isn't closure until someone's ready to close the door. ~ Jonathan Maberry

In our culture of constant access and nonstop media, nothing feels more like a curse from God than time in the wilderness. To be obscure, to be off the beaten path, to be in the wilderness feels like abandonment. It seems more like exile than a vacation. To be so far off of everyone's radar that the world might forget about us for a while? That's almost akin to death ... [But] far from being punishment, judgment, or a curse, the wilderness is a gift. It's where we can experience the primal delight of being fully known and delighted in by God. ~ Jonathan Martin

The moment was surreal. A sometimes-autistic young man with two identities lecturing a room full of zombies on feelings and realities. ~ Jonathan Friesen

Albert Einstein said that the only way to win at roulette is to steal from the table while the croupier isn't looking. ~ Jonathan L. Howard

I asked her why she was getting so upset about such a small thing. She said, 'It doesn't feel small to me. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Did Jonathan not realize that sometimes a girl didn't want to be honorable? That sometimes young women had the same desires and needs as young men? ~ Courtney Brandt

You wish to isolate fear. Ah, well, if only I'd realised your ambitions were so simple. Perhaps we can work up to it by capturing faith, bottling hope, and presenting love to the world as a commodity, available by the pound, wrapped in greaseproof paper and topped with a bow. ~ Jonathan L. Howard

The price of good journalism is eternal vigilance. ~ Jonathan Kern

what use am I to anyone like this?" "Use is a poor word, a small word. You are of great worth to many just as you are. ~ Jonathan Renshaw

The gift is for you ... The surprise is for me. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

His experience and training should have taught him that families are the cauldrons in which violence is brewed. (144) ~ Jonathan Kellerman

In terms of me being a Christian, going to Israel was really cool. Going to the West Bank, Bethlehem, floating in the Dead Sea - that was great for me. ~ Larry Fitzgerald

Actually - and this was where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable - some such divine claim underlay not just 'the occupation' but the whole idea of a separate state for Jews in Palestine. Take away the divine warrant for the Holy Land and where were you, and what were you? Just another land-thief like the Turks or the British, except that in this case you wanted the land without the people. And the original Zionist slogan - 'a land without a people for a people without a land' - disclosed its own negation when I saw the densely populated Arab towns dwelling sullenly under Jewish tutelage. You want irony? How about Jews becoming colonizers at just the moment when other Europeans had given up on the idea? ~ Christopher Hitchens

The only thing worse than a silly politician analyzing art is a silly artist analyzing politics ~ Jonathan Alter

The idea isn't to do the impossible. The idea is to show the world that if one man can do the impossible, then maybe the rest of the world can do what's possible. ~ Jonathan Malley

In the old days, Christmas lights had come in short strings that were wired serially. If a single bulb burned out or even just loosened in its socket, the circuit was broken and the entire string went dark. One of the season's rituals for Gary and Chip had been to tighten each little brass-footed bulb in a darkened string and then, if this didn't work, to replace each bulb in turn until the dead culprit was found. (What joy the boys had taken in the resurrection of a string!) By the time Denise was old enough to help with the lights, the technology had advanced. The wiring was parallel, and the bulbs had snap-in plastic bases. A single faulty light didn't affect the rest of the community but identified itself instantly for instant replacement ... ~ Jonathan Franzen

The more I found, the less I understood. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

I don't think you can guess what people will really like. You have to come at it from a more natural place and then kind of hope that your taste is shared by enough people to keep going. ~ Jonathan Nolan

They'd lost their way, and lost their compass, but not their belief that it was possible to get back - even if neither knew exactly what happiness she was referring to. The ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

God has prepared for Himself one great song of praise throughout eternity, and those who enter the community of God join in this song. It is the song that the "morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy" at the creation of the world. (Job 38:7). It is the victory song of the children of Israel after passing through the Red Sea, the Magnificat of Mary after the annunciation, the song of Paul and Silas in the night of prison, the song of the singers on the sea of glass after their rescue, the "song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb" (Rev. 15:3) It is the song of the heavenly fellowship. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Too many cases thrown out of court, too much pop-psycho crap, satanic bullshit ... if you FEEL you've been abused, you HAVE been! ~ Jonathan Kellerman

If the Palestinian people really suffered a nakba, it was largely of their own making - and that of their grand mufti. ~ Sol Stern

I grew up feeling Israel is very important, and I'm very supportive of Israel. At the same time, I think you can be really supportive of Israel and not look at it as a black-and-white situation. ~ Darren Star

I, like balloon animal hacks everywhere, can only make one animal so far. It is a LEGO version of the Island of Dr. Moreau, wherein I have brick-engineered a pig-camel, a dog-camel, and a camel with wheels. These monstrosities are quickly torn apart, and I wonder if I have some unresolved camel issues. ~ Jonathan Bender

There is a sense of violation in learning that, unbeknownst to me, my mind has maintained such a strong connection with the town, as if my brain's been sneaking around behind my back. ~ Jonathan Tropper

A liberal society stands on the proposition that we should all take seriously the idea that we might be wrong. This means we must place no one, including ourselves, beyond the reach of criticism; it means that we must allow people to err, even where the error offends and upsets, as it often will. ~ Jonathan Rauch

Just remember this, girl, the water you hate is the water that's going to drown you. ~ Jonathan Odell

The restaurant, Bongiorno's, was bad and didn't know it. Everything was presented with a passive-aggressive flourish, as though we probably weren't savvy enough to appreciate the oregano-heavy garlic bread, the individual bowls for olive pits, the starched napkins stuffed into our wineglasses, or the waiter's strained enunciation of a long list of specials. ~ Jonathan Lethem

↑ top
up
position
down
The fact that I suspect I'm an asshole means I probably am not, because a real asshole doesn't think he's an asshole, does he? Therefore, by realizing that I'm an asshole, I am in fact negating that very realization, am I not? Descartes's Asshole Axiom: I think I am; therefor I'm not one. ~ Jonathan Tropper

The Olympics is a huge deal, and there's such an adrenaline rush, but I am one of those people that finds every little victory in life extremely satisfying - the day I got married, the day I moved into my house, the first car I bought, becoming an uncle. The little victories in life really keep you going, and none of those are any less special than the Olympic team. ~ Jonathan Horton

Forgiveness is a comfort, but it doesn't bring back what you lost ~ Jonathan Tropper

Lance Reddick: I was alone with David, and we just got to talking. I asked him something. I remember him saying organizations can't be reformed, but people can. I rememeber being struck by it when he said it, because I knew that I had never thought of it that way, and I knew that there was something profound in the insight. Then, over time, particularly when I watched the show, I realized how we see both on the criminal side and on the police side, you see people struggling to live up to the codes of the institutions that they're a part of and seeing how it chips away at their humanity. ~ Jonathan Abrams

Forever and ever, brother, hail. Forever and ever, farewell. ~ Cassandra Clare

One of the reasons why I liked living in Manhattan was that the city would share your mood the moment you walked out the door. If you were in a hurry, everything else was too, even the pigeons. You shared the same speed and sense of urgency to get wherever you were going.
When you had time to kill, it was happy to give you things to look at and do that easily took up whole days. I didn't agree with people who said Manhattan was a cold, indifferent town. Sure it was gruff, but it was also playful and sometimes very funny. ~ Jonathan Carroll

Life is about love and as a country that stands united, we lose in the battle that we call love. ~ Jonathan Anthony Burkett

You write a play mostly out of yourself. There's a need to get a certain thing down. ~ Israel Horovitz

Ethiopia is engraved on my heart. I first went in 1973 because I heard of a terrible famine. They were denying it even as we got the film out. The coverage destroyed the emperor's credibility. ~ Jonathan Dimbleby

Triumphant Tories, and desponding Whigs,
Forget their feuds, and join to save their wigs. ~ Jonathan Swift

You' re Benjamin Ripley, aren't you?"
"Uh... no." It was worth a shot.
And for half a second it almost seemed to work. The assassin hesitated, slightly confused, then asked, "Then who are you?"
"Jonathan Monkeywarts" I winced. It had been the first name to popped into my head. I made a mental note to be more prepared next time this happened. ~ Stuart Gibbs

OTHER RELAXATION TECHNIQUES
There are many other stress management techniques that can help you to "bring yourself down" quickly when you are highly stressed. You can use them before a situation where anticipation raises tensions that do not automatically subside after a few minutes. You also can use them during an interaction or when a surprise threatens to escalate your stress out of control. Or use them after an encounter has raised your stress level, if it is not subsiding naturally.

Mental Imagery
You experimented with mental imagery in the previous chapter on goal-setting. The use of mental imagery also can be an effective tool for anxiety control. Think of it as a new application of skills you already have: memory and imagination. When I asked you earlier to recall how many windows there are in your bedroom, you used imagery to retrieve the information. Mentally, you went into the room, looked from wall to wall, and counted. That process is mental imagery.
From a relaxation perspective, your nervous system cannot distinguish between reality and imagery. Material passed from the body to the senses, whether real or imagined, is processed the same way. Therefore, imagery can play an important role in inducing internal self-regulation and relaxation. If there is a particular image - such as the warm, sandy beach of the previous exercise, a cool forest clearing covered with a blanket of pine needles, or even a clear blue sky - that represents relax ~ Jonathan Berent

You don't have people chanting 'Death to America' in Israel. ~ Benjamin Netanyahu

There is no Zionism except the rescue of Jews. ~ Golda Meir

He invented stories so fantastic she had to believe. Of cours, she was only a child, still removing the dust from her first death. What else could she do? And he was already accumulating the dust of his second death. What else could he do? ~ Jonathan Safran Foer