Top 267 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Rabbis

God does not cause our misfortunes. Some are caused by bad luck, some are caused by bad people, and some are simply an inevitable consequence of our being human and being mortal. living in a world of inflexible natural laws. The painful things that happen to us are not punishments for our misbehavior, nor are they in any way part of some grand design on God's part. Because the tragedy is not God's will, we need not feel hurt or betrayed by God when tragedy strikes. We can turn to Him for help in overcoming it, precisely because we can tell ourselves that God is as outraged by it as we are.

The world is new to us every morning - and every man should believe he is reborn each day

I don't speak because I have the power to speak; I speak because I don't have the power to remain silent.

Prayer is a universal phenomenon in the soul-life of man. It is the soul's reaction to the terrors and joys, the uncertainties and dreams of life.

The world exists for the sake of kindness.

There is greatness in doing something you hate for the sake of someone you love.

...the goal of all spiritual life is to get your ego out of the way - outwit the sucker; dissolve it; shoot it; kill it. Silence the incessant planning, organizing, running, manipulating, possessing, and processing"... "because these activities preclude awareness of the Divine.

By remaining exactly the same today as you were yesterday, you are guaranteeing that tomorrow will be no better than today.

Most men worry about their own bellies and other people's souls, when we all ought to be worried about our own souls and other people's bellies.

If someone is too tired to give you a smile, leave one of your own, because no one needs a smile as much as those who have none to give.

A minority is always compelled to think. That is the blessing of being in the minority.

For those without faith there are no answers, for those with faith there are no questions.

Some people sleep until morning. Others know they have to bring the morning.

There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our Puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom.

Pride is a deeply rooted ailment of the soul. The penalty is misery; the remedy lies in the sincere, life-long cultivation of humility, which means true self-evaluation and a proper perspective toward past, present and future.

What does this compassion entail? ... It means understanding one's connection to the whole of creation: understanding that one is part of that creation, that there is a unity that underlies all that we see, all that we hear, all that we feel.

At this crucial crossroads of history, we join to call on the world to recognize that violence begets violence; that nuclear proliferation benefits no one; that we can, we will, and we must find other ways to protect ourselves, our nations and our future: for it is not sufficient to have peace in our time, but, instead, we must leave a peaceful world to our children.

People often avoid making decisions out of fear of making a mistake. Actually the failure to make decisions is one of life's biggest mistakes.

An individual should hold an awareness of God and His love all the time. He should not separate his consciousness from the Divine while he journeys on the way, nor when he lies down nor when he rises up.

Everything in life serves as a challenge and test to elevate us. Therefore it is right to be grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow through tackling this real life experience.

The believer in God has to account for the existence of unjust suffering; the atheist has to account for everything else.

I don’t believe in western morality, i.e. don’t kill civilians or children, don’t destroy holy sites, don’t fight during holiday seasons, don’t bomb cemeteries, don’t shoot until they shoot first because it is immoral. The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle).

Do not be deceived by the outward appearance of age or youth - a new pitcher may be full of good, old wine, while an old one may be totally empty.

Darkness is not chased away with sticks, not even cannons. One simply lights a small candle and the darkness flees before it.

Ruminating about the past will get you nowhere. So go ahead and learn from the past whatever you can, and then put it behind you. Remember, there is nothing you can do to change it, but you can use its lessons to improve your future.

Wisdom is to the soul as food is to the body.

The Land of Israel will be small, but the people of Israel will make it great. Not in opulence, but in eminence will their destiny be fulfilled, and the elixir of their pride will be distilled not out of dominion or far-flung borders, but out of the faithful and skillful building of the good society.

I want to see that our older people still feel useful, and our younger people feel engaged in our wider society, and I want to feel that we can bond people from disparate backgrounds, ages and communities together in a greater project, which they get engaged in for the sake of others. Volunteering, in all sorts of ways, seems to me likely to be able to achieve some of that

The object of education is not merely to enable our children to gain their daily bread and to acquire pleasant means of recreation, but that they should know God and serve Him with earnestness and devotion.

The distinctions between advertising and marketing are blurring, requiring new roles and new forms of consumer-centric marketing.

I'm not alive to be right. I'm here to care, to heal, to understand

The proper response, as Hanukkah teaches, is not to curse the darkness but to light a candle.

The art of living is to know when to hold fast and when to let go.

A king without a queen is not a king. The main point of creation is the union of male and female.

Words are the pen of the heart, but music is the pen of the soul.

When you're one step ahead of the crowd you're a genius. When you're two steps ahead, you're a crackpot.

It is God who enables us to return to life after tragedy-not by eradicating all suffering but by giving us the strength and the courage to heal what we can heal.

No woman is required to build the world by destroying herself.

When you have a true ambition for something, you will not give up hope. Giving up hope is a sign that you are lacking ambition to achieve that goal!

The current treatment of animals in the livestock trade definitely renders the consumption of meat as halachically unacceptable as the product of illegitimate means. ... As it is halachically prohibited to harm oneself and as healthy, nutritious vegetarian alternatives are easily available, meat consumption has become halachically unjustifiable.

I am poor and feeble, persecuted and vulnerable, Yeshua conquered me, and with the New Man he honored me, He delivered me from the poverty-stricken self with his great love, he cherishes me.

Would the Holy One, Blessed is he, dispense judgment without justice? But we may say that he whom God loves will be chastised. For since the day the Holy Temple was destroyed, the righteous are seized by death for the iniquities of the generation

Greed will always leave you dissatisfied because you'll never be able to get everything you desire. Greed never allows you to think you have enough; it always destroys you by making you strive ever harder for more.

Man's pursuit of physical desires and earthly possessions is an indication of his lack of conviction that the purpose of his existence is the attainment of spirituality.

Through faith man experiences the meaning of the world through action he is to give to it meaning.

Grief is like a wheel that goes around and around the world.

As for the bitter herbs.... To see everyone with tears coursing down their faces, laughing and gasping at the same time, is fun and also makes the point - bitter herbs must be really bitter to experience the suffering.

Women want to be chosen.

The ideal of man is to be a revelation himself, clearly to recognize himself as a manifestation of God.

One of the basic needs of every human being is the need to be loved, to have our wishes and feelings taken seriously, to be validated as people who matter.

This was the purpose of the whole creation, that man should recognize and know Him and give praise to His Name.

The world is full of wonders and miracles but man takes his little hand and covers his eyes and sees nothing.

Man is free in his imagination, but bound by his reason.

Jesus Christ is the most famous Jew of all time, but is today remembered as a Christian. Surprisingly, the Jewish community has accepted this distortion of history, and tends to regard Jesus as an apostate. How odd that the Jews would accept a Christian version of one of their brethren rather than seeking to discover the man entombed beneath the myth.

I too searched far and wide for the cure to addiction, but my medical and psychiatric background did not lead me to the cure because the source of addiction does not lie here,.

Anti-Zionists, last of all, exhibit a distaste for certain words. It was Thomas Hobbes who, anticipating semantics, pointed out that words are counters, not coins; that the wise man looks through them to reality. This counsel many anti-Zionists seem to have neglected. They are especially disturbed by the two nouns nationalism and commonwealth, and by the adjective political. And yet these terms on examination are not at all upsetting.

Service of God consists in what we do to our neighbor.

Symbolically, what the rabbis say is that at Passover, what we have to do is try to get rid of our hot air - our pride, our feeling that we are the most important people in the whole entire world and that everything should revolve round us.

Teachers learn from their students' discussions

Americans consume three quarters of the world's anti-depressants because materialism will never bring happiness.