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We should challenge the relativism that tells us there is no right or wrong, when every instinct of our mind knows it is not so, and is a mere excuse to allow us to indulge in what we believe we can get away with. A world without values quickly becomes a world without value.

Jonathan Sacks

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Jonathan Sacks
Age: 72 †
Born: 1948
Born: March 8
Died: 2020
Died: November 7
Clergyman
Politician
Rabbi
Theologian
University Teacher
St Pancras
London
Jonathan Henry Sacks
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
Jonathan H. Sacks
Baron Sacks
Yaakov Zvi
Jonathan Henry Sacks
Baron Sacks
Believe
Challenges
Quickly
World
Wrong
Excuse
Values
Instinct
Away
Challenge
Without
Allow
Right
Mere
Relativism
Every
Value
Indulge
Mind
Becomes
Tells

More quotes by Jonathan Sacks

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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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Just as the natural environment depends on biodiversity, so the human environment depends on cultural diversity, because no one civilization encompasses all the spiritual, ethical and artistic expressions of mankind.
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Faced with destruction, the Jewish people survived.
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People are feeling and sensing a return of anti-Semitism - even in Europe, which, seventy years after the Holocaust, is a very scary thing. I think they are feeling that Israel is very isolated and doesn't always get what they see as fair treatment in the European media.
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God's forgiveness allows us to be honest with ourselves. We recognize our imperfections, admit our failures, and plead to God for clemency.
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Much can and must be done by governments, but they cannot of themselves change lives.
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The Holocaust survivors are among the most inspiring people I have had the privilege to meet.
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Hope, even more than necessity, is the mother of invention.
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Dreams are where we visit the many lands and landscapes of human possibility and discover the one where we feel at home. The great religious leaders were all dreamers.
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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.
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The first of the request prayers in the daily Amidah is a fractal. It replicates in miniature the structure of the Amidah as a whole.
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A society in which there are high levels of voluntary activity will simply be a better, happier place than one where there are not.
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The idols of today are unmistakable - self-esteem without achievement, sex without consequences, wealth without responsibility, pleasure without struggle and experience without commitment.
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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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When everything that matters can be bought and sold, when commitments can be broken because they are no longer to our advantage, when shopping becomes salvation and advertising slogans become our litany, when our worth is measured by how much we earn and spend, then the market is destroying the very virtues on which in the long run it depends.
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Yom HaShoah is a vital day in the Jewish calendar, providing us with a focal point for our remembrance. We cannot bring the dead back to life, but we can bring their memory back to life and ensure they are not forgotten. We can undertake in our lives to do what they were so cruelly prevented from doing in theirs.
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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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Jews read the books of Moses not just as history but as divine command. The question to which they are an answer is not, What happened? but rather, How then shall I live? And it's only with the exodus that the life of the commands really begins.
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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.
Jonathan Sacks
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We from every religion feel comfortable in Britain because there is a host. The Church of England is a good host, it has been a major force in shaping England into such a tolerant society.
Jonathan Sacks