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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

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Harold S. Kushner
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More quotes by Harold S. Kushner

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Integrity means being whole, unbroken, undivided. It describes a person who has united the different parts of his or her personality, so there is no longer a split in the soul ... For the person of integrity, life may not be easy but it is simple: Figure out what is right and do it. All other considerations come in second.
Harold S. Kushner
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God, who neither causes nor prevents tragedies, helps by inspiring people to help.
Harold S. Kushner
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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
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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
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No good deed ever goes wasted.
Harold S. Kushner
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Many biblical verses are like inkblot tests, revealing more about us than about the text in question.
Harold S. Kushner
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The idea is to find some bit of holiness in everything-food, sex, earning and spending money, having children, conversations with friends. Everything can be seen as a miracle, as part of God's plan. When we can truly see this, we nourish our souls.
Harold S. Kushner
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One of the most sublime experiences we can ever have is to wake up feeling healthy after we have been sick.
Harold S. Kushner
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What cannot be achieved in one lifetime will happen when one lifetime is joined to another.
Harold S. Kushner
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The soul is not a physical entity, but instead refers to everything about us that is not physical - our values, memories, identity, sense of humor. Since the soul represents the parts of the human being that are not physical, it cannot get sick, it cannot die, it cannot disappear. In short, the soul is immortal.
Harold S. Kushner
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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
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I believe that God is totally moral, but nature, one of God's creatures, is not moral. Nature is blind.
Harold S. Kushner
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I am quite confident that the most important part of a human being is not his physical body but his nonphysical essence, which some people call soul and others, personality... The nonphysical part cannot die and cannot decay because it's not physical.
Harold S. Kushner
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Life is like the baseball season, where even the best team loses at least a third of its games, and even the worst team has its days of brilliance. The goal is not to win every game but to win more than you lose, and if you do that often enough, in the end you may find you have won it all.
Harold S. Kushner
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One man alone can't defeat the forces of evil, but many good people coming together can.
Harold S. Kushner
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Our responding to life's unfairness with sympathy... may be the surest proof of all of God's reality.
Harold S. Kushner
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When you are kind to others, it not only changes you, it changes the world.
Harold S. Kushner
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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
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I suspect that the happiest people you know are the ones who work at being kind, helpful and reliable - and happiness sneaks into their lives while they are busy doing those things. It is a by-product, never a primary goal.
Harold S. Kushner
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When your life is filled with the desire to see the holiness in everyday life, something magical happens: Ordinary life becomes extraordinary, and the very process of life begins to nourish your soul.
Harold S. Kushner