Quote

We have confused God with Santa Claus. And we believe that prayer means making a list of everything you don't have but want and trying to persuade God you deserve it. Now I'm sorry, that's not God, that's Santa Claus.

Harold S. Kushner

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Harold S. Kushner
Making
Santa
Means
List
Everything
Lists
Mean
Confused
Trying
God
Believe
Sorry
Deserve
Claus
Prayer
Persuade

More quotes by Harold S. Kushner

Image
. . .We are here to finish God's labors. . .so that we could be His partners in completing the work of creation.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
When I talk to people who feel this emptiness and lack of fulfillment, I recommend they find a source of balance in their lives. I suggest they find a way to give back to the world in order to feel a sense of completeness.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
When you carry out acts of kindness you get a wonderful feeling inside. It is as though something inside your body responds and says, yes, this is how I ought to feel.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
We pray to you, O God ... for strength, determination, and willpower, to do instead of just to pray, to become instead of merely to wish.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
There are some things we should feel guilty about, but the guilt feelings should attach to the deed, not to the doer.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
When a mentally retarded child is born, the religious question we often ask is, Why does God let this happen? The better question to pose is to ask, What kind of community should we be so that mental retardation isn't a barrier to the enjoyment of one's full humanity?
Harold S. Kushner
Image
One of the most sublime experiences we can ever have is to wake up feeling healthy after we have been sick.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
Good people will do good things, lots of them, because they are good people. They will do bad things because they are human.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
When you are kind to others, it not only changes you, it changes the world.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
One of the sages of the Talmud taught nearly 200 years ago that God could have created a plant that would grow loaves of bread. Instead He created wheat for us to mill and bake into bread. Why? So that we could be HIs partners in completing the work of creation.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
No good deed ever goes wasted.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
I am convinced that it is not the fear of death, of our lives ending, that haunts our sleep so much as the fear that as far as the world is concerned, we might as well never have lived.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
History is written by winners, so most history books are about people who win.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Those rewards create almost as many problems as they solve. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
You don't have to be religious to have a soul everybody has one. You don't have to be religious to perfect your soul I have found saintliness in avowed atheists.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
That is why we have to make room in our lives for people who may sometimes disappoint or exasperate us. If we hold our friends to a standard of perfection, or if they do that to us, we will end up far lonelier than we want to be.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
The God I believe in is not so fragile that you hurt Him by being angry at him, or so petty that He will hold it against you for being upset with Him.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
In all my years of counselling those near death, I've yet to hear anyone say they wish they had spent more time at the office
Harold S. Kushner
Image
Our human bodies are miracles, not because they defy laws of nature, but precisely because they obey them.
Harold S. Kushner
Image
We do ourselves and others a disservice when we make old age something to be feared...The longer we live, the more life we possess.
Harold S. Kushner