Jonathan Sacks Quotes
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.
In our interconnected world, we must learn to feel enlarged, not threatened, by difference - that is what I have argued.
Make space in your life for the things that matter, for family and friends, love and generosity, fun and joy. Without this, you will burn out in mid-career and wonder where your life went.
No great achiever - even those who made it seem easy - ever succeeded without hard work.
When money rules, we remember the price of things and forget the value of things, and that is dangerous.
The supreme religious challenge is to see God’s image in one who is not in our image.
Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean.
A society in which there are high levels of voluntary activity will simply be a better, happier place than one where there are not.
God has given us many faiths but only one world in which to co-exist. May your work help all of us to cherish our commonalities and feel enlarged by our differences.
True freedom requires the rule of law and justice, and a judicial system in which the rights of some are not secured by the denial of rights to others.
The world we build tomorrow is born in the stories we tell our children today. Politics moves the pieces. Education changes the game.
Religion survives because it answers three questions that every reflective person must ask. Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live?
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.
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.
While we can remember the past, we cannot write the future. Only our children, the future of our community, can do that.
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.
Find people not to envy but to admire. Do not the profitable but the admirable deed. Live by ideals.
Man was not made for the service of economies; economies were made to serve mankind; and men and women were made - so we believe - to serve one another, not just ourselves.
Religion is the best antidote to the individualism of the consumer age. The idea that society can do without it flies in the face of history and, now, evolutionary biology.
Follow your passion. Nothing - not wealth, success, accolades or fame - is worth spending a lifetime doing things you don't enjoy.
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.
Religious ritual is a way of structuring time so that we, not employers, the market or the media, are in control. Life needs its pauses, its chapter breaks, if the soul is to have space to breathe.
The market economy is very good at wealth creation but not perfect at all about wealth distribution.
The Holocaust survivors are among the most inspiring people I have had the privilege to meet.
Values are tapes we play on the Walkman of the mind: any tune we choose so long as it does not disturb others.
The universe is more than mere matter in motion. It and we were brought into being by a Creator who seeks our good.
Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent.
If the history of the Day of Atonement has anything to say to us now it is: never relieve individuals of moral responsibility. The more we have, the more we grow.
In virtually every Western society in the 1960s there was a moral revolution, an abandonment of its entire traditional ethic of self-restraint.
Cyberspace can't compensate for real space. We benefit from chatting to people face to face.
The emphasis has been on rights, not responsibilities. When it comes to piecing together the fragments of broken lives, we have tended to place the entire burden on the state and its agencies.
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
Britain, relative to the U.S., is a highly secular society. Philanthropy alone cannot fill the gap left by government cutbacks. And the sources of altruism go deep into our evolutionary past.
I see in the rising crescendo of ethnic tensions, civilization clashes and the use of religious justification for acts of terror, a clear and present danger to humanity.
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.
There's always hope. You can lose everything else in the world, but Jews never lose hope.
While everyone else is thinking about economics and politics, executive salaries and the future of the euro, do the opposite, even if it's hard. Invest in the spirit.
God's forgiveness allows us to be honest with ourselves. We recognize our imperfections, admit our failures, and plead to God for clemency.
Freedom... leads those who have more than they need to share with those who have less
Israel is a democratic state with an independent judiciary, a free press and a diverse population of many cultures, religions and creeds.
