Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks Quotes

When human beings try to become more than human, they quickly become less than human. ~ Jonathan Sacks

Jews have deep respect for the Queen and the royal family. We say a prayer for them every Sabbath in synagogue. We recite a special blessing on seeing the Queen. ~ Jonathan Sacks

Science will explain how but not why. It talks about what is, not what ought to be. Science is descriptive, not prescriptive; it can tell us about causes but it cannot tell us about purposes. Indeed, science disavows purposes. ~ Jonathan Sacks

We know – it has been measured in many experiments – that children with strong impulse control grow to be better adjusted, more dependable, achieve higher grades in school and college and have more success in their careers than others. Success depends on the ability to delay gratification, which is precisely what a consumerist culture undermines. At every stage, the emphasis is on the instant gratification of instinct. In the words of the pop group Queen, "I want it all and I want it now." A whole culture is being infantilised. ~ Jonathan Sacks

our views of the natural are shaped by our ideas of the supernatural. ~ Jonathan Sacks

God is back and Europe as a whole still doesn't get it. It is our biggest single collective cultural and intellectual blind spot. ~ Jonathan Sacks

The people of Israel are entitled, as is any other nation, to live in peace and safety. ~ Jonathan Sacks

If we are to cherish freedom, and to guard it, we must remember what the alternative is: the bread of affliction and the bitter herbs of slavery. ~ Jonathan Sacks

Defining yourself as a victim is ultimately a diminution of what makes us human. It teaches us to see ourselves as objects, not subjects. ~ Jonathan Sacks

The evidence shows that religious people - defined by regular attendance at a place of worship - actually do make better neighbors. ~ Jonathan Sacks

The universe is more than mere matter in motion. It and we were brought into being by a Creator who seeks our good. ~ Jonathan Sacks

Giving is what makes a nation great. ~ Jonathan Sacks

As the former British chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks has expressed it: "If the Nazis searched out every Jew in hate, the Rebbe wished to search out every Jew in love. ~ Joseph Telushkin

A perfect storm is in the making: financial uncertainty, economic downturn, government cuts, rising unemployment and a future that looks less clear the more we try to fathom it. ~ Jonathan Sacks

A primordial instinct going back to humanity's tribal past makes us see difference as a threat. That instinct is massively dysfunctional in an age in which our several destinies are interlinked. Oddly enough, it is the market -- the least overtly spiritual of concepts -- that delivers a profoundly spiritual message: that it is through exchange that difference becomes a blessing, not a curse. When difference leads to war, both sides lose. When it leads to mutual enrichment, both sides gain. ~ Jonathan Sacks

The consumer society, directed at making us happy, achieves the opposite. It encourages us to spend money we do not have, to buy things we do not need, for the sake of a happiness that will not last. ~ Jonathan Sacks

What creates freedom? A revolution in the streets? Mass protest? Civil war? A change of government? The ousting of the old guard and its replacement by the new? History, more often than not, shows that hopes raised by such events are often dashed, sooner rather than later. ~ Jonathan Sacks

Peace can be agreed around the conference table, but unless it grows in ordinary hearts and minds, it does not last. It may not even begin ~ Jonathan Sacks

There's always hope. You can lose everything else in the world, but Jews never lose hope. ~ Jonathan Sacks

With wealth comes responsibility. ~ Jonathan Sacks

Paperwork is the religion of the Civil Service. I can just imagine Sir Humphrey Appleby on his deathbed, surround by wills and insurance claim forms, looking up and saying, 'I cannot go yet, God, I haven't done the paperwork. ~ Jonathan Lynn & Anthony Jay

The Holocaust survivors are among the most inspiring people I have had the privilege to meet. ~ Jonathan Sacks

Freedom ... leads those who have more than they need to share with those who have less ~ Jonathan Sacks

Just as it is necessary to rob your enemies of their humanity, so you have to find a way of relinquishing responsibility for the evil you are about to commit. You must define yourself as a victim. It follows that you, in committing murder, even genocide, are merely acting in self-defence. It is the victim who is responsible. This was Hitler's constant and deeply paradoxical claim. As Jeffrey Herf points out, he and his propagandists had to maintain two completely contradictory ideas: 'one rooted in the grandiose idea of a master race and world domination, the other in the self-pitying paranoia of the innocent, beleaguered victim'.23 In general, as Vamik Volkan notes, dualists tend to combine 'paradoxical feelings of omnipotence and victimization'.24 On the one hand we are masters of the universe; on the other we are the devil's slaves. ~ Jonathan Sacks

In the post-enlightenment Europe of the 19th century the highest authority was no longer the Church. Instead it was science. Thus was born racial anti-Semitism, based on two disciplines regarded as science in their day - the 'scientific study of race' and the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel. ~ Jonathan Sacks

The first of the request prayers in the daily Amidah is a fractal. It replicates in miniature the structure of the Amidah as a whole. ~ Jonathan Sacks

The Hebrew Bible contains multiple provisions to ensure that no one would go hungry. The corners of the field, forgotten sheaves of grain, gleanings that drop from the hands of the gleaner, and small clusters of grapes left on the vine were to be given to the poor. ~ Jonathan Sacks

Jonathan Sacks; "One way is just to think, for instance, of biodiversity. The extraordinary thing we now know, thanks to Crick and Watson's discovery of DNA and the decoding of the human and other genomes, is that all life, everything, all the three million species of life and plant life - all have the same source. We all come from a single source. Everything that lives has its genetic code written in the same alphabet. Unity creates diversity. So don't think of one God, one truth, one way. Think of one God creating this extraordinary number of ways, the 6,800 languages that are actually spoken. Don't think there's only one language within which we can speak to God. The Bible is saying to us the whole time: Don't think that God is as simple as you are. He's in places you would never expect him to be. And you know, we lose a bit of that in English translation. When Moses at the burning bush says to God, "Who are you?" God says to him three words: "Hayah asher hayah."Those words are mistranslated in English as "I am that which I am." But in Hebrew, it means "I will be who or how or where I will be," meaning, Don't think you can predict me. I am a God who is going to surprise you. One of the ways God surprises us is by letting a Jew or a Christian discover the trace of God's presence in a Buddhist monk or a Sikh tradition of hospitality or the graciousness of Hindu life. Don't think we can confine God into our categories. God is bigger than religion. ~ Krista Tippett

While we can remember the past, we cannot write the future. Only our children, the future of our community, can do that. ~ Jonathan Sacks

ISIS is a terrorist entity whose barbarities have been condemned by all those who value our common humanity. In the current political climate, when hate crimes are rising and political rhetoric is increasingly divisive, this is all the more shocking. ~ Jonathan Sacks

Close to a billion people - one-eighth of the world's population - still live in hunger. Each year 2 million children die through malnutrition. This is happening at a time when doctors in Britain are warning of the spread of obesity. We are eating too much while others starve. ~ Jonathan Sacks

To whom is an international corporation answerable? Often they do not employ workers. They outsource manufacturing to places far away. If wages rise in one place, they can, almost instantly, transfer production to somewhere else. If a tax regime in one country becomes burdensome, they can relocate to another. To whom, then, are they accountable? By whom are they controllable? For whom are they responsible? To which group of people other than shareholders do they owe loyalty? The extreme mobility, not only of capital but also of manufacturing and servicing, is in danger of creating institutions that have power without responsibility, as well as a social class, the global elite, that has no organic connection with any group except itself. ~ Jonathan Sacks

When money rules, we remember the price of things and forget the value of things, and that is dangerous. ~ Jonathan Sacks