Jonathan Sacks Quotes
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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
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The greatest single antidote to violence is conversation.
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After the destructionofthe Second Temple Jewslived by an ancient and fundamental insight, that God does not live in buildings but in the human heart.
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Religiosity turns out to be the best indicator of civic involvement: it's more accurate than education, age, income, gender or race.
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Volunteering has been undervalued in Britain for a long time. Often it has been seen as a kind of cut-price, amateur version of work that would be better done by the state. When politicians speak about it, people hear in the background the sound of budgets being cut.
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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.
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I do not want to suggest that you have to be religious to be moral.
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Those who believe that liberal democracy and the free market can be defended by the force of law and regulation alone, without an internalised sense of duty and morality, are tragically mistaken.
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Follow your passion. Nothing - not wealth, success, accolades or fame - is worth spending a lifetime doing things you don't enjoy.
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If we are to negotiate the coming years safely, we may need a new kind of leadership. To put it more precisely, we need the rediscovery of an ancient kind of leadership that has rarely been given the prominence it deserves. I mean the leader as teacher.
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Islamophobia is a complex phenomenon.
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The royals - all of them, especially Prince Philip and Prince Charles - have done outstanding work with the faith communities.
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Part of the beauty of Judaism, and surely this is so for other faiths also, is that it gently restores control over time. Three times a day we stop what we are doing and turn to God in prayer. We recover perspective. We inhale a deep breath of eternity.
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While we can remember the past, we cannot write the future. Only our children, the future of our community, can do that.
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Since the 18th century, many Western intellectuals have predicted religion's imminent demise.
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The twenty-first century is, and will remain, the Age of Insecurity.
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In thinking about religion and society in the 21st century, we should broaden the conversation about faith from doctrinal debates to the larger question of how it might inspire us to strengthen the bonds of belonging that redeem us from our solitude, helping us to construct together a gracious and generous social order.
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As the political leaders of Europe meet to save the euro and European Union, so should religious leaders.
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To defend a country, you need an army, but to defend a civilization, you need education...
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There are hard texts in each tradition which we must confront and ask ourselves, 'Can we reinterpret those texts to allow us to live peaceably, and respectfully, with people of other faiths?' That is a job only Jews can do for Judaism, only Christians can do for Christianity, and only Muslims can do for Islam. But sometimes the sight of someone in one faith wrestling with that faith can empower you to wrestle with another faith.
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Israel is a democratic state with an independent judiciary, a free press and a diverse population of many cultures, religions and creeds.
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Freedom begins with what we teach our children. That is why Jews became a people whose passion is education, whose heroes are teachers and whose citadels are schools.
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God is back and Europe as a whole still doesn't get it. It is our biggest single collective cultural and intellectual blind spot.
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In our interconnected world, we must learn to feel enlarged, not threatened, by difference - that is what I have argued.
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Freedom is not won by merely overthrowing a tyrannical ruler or an oppressive regime. That is usually only the prelude to a new tyranny, a new oppression.
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The supreme religious challenge is to see God’s image in one who is not in our image.
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We do not always appreciate the role the Queen has played in one of the most significant changes in the past 60 years: the transformation of Britain into a multi-ethnic, multi-faith society. No one does interfaith better than the Royal family, and it starts with the Queen herself.
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Freedom... leads those who have more than they need to share with those who have less
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When we love and make loving commitments, we create families and communities within which people can grow and take risks, knowing that hands will be there to catch them should they fall.
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Some years ago there was a study to discover the most stressful occupation. It turned out not to be the head of a large business, football manager or prime minister, but rather: bus driver.
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