Quote

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.

Jonathan Sacks

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Matter
Broken
Advertising
Slogans
Much
Worth
Salvation
Measured
Long
Longer
Matters
Sold
Becomes
Market
Earn
Virtue
Commitment
Shopping
Running
Advantage
Virtues
Become
Spend
Bought
Litany
Everything
Depends
Destroying
Commitments

More quotes by Jonathan Sacks

Image
Focus on the mind and the soul. Read. Study. Enrol in a course of lectures. Pray. Become a member of a religious congregation. Study the Bible or other ancient works of wisdom.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
We need to rediscover the idea of the common good and work together to build a home.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
The Jewish festival of freedom is the oldest continuously observed religious ritual in the world. Across the centuries, Passover has never lost its power to inspire the imagination of successive generations of Jews with its annually re-enacted drama of slavery and liberation.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
No great achiever - even those who made it seem easy - ever succeeded without hard work.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
Why did God create mankind? Because God likes stories.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
With wealth comes responsibility.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
As the political leaders of Europe meet to save the euro and European Union, so should religious leaders.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
If we are to cherish freedom, and to guard it, we must remember what the alternative is: the bread of affliction and the bitter herbs of slavery.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
We believe that what we possess we don't ultimately own. God is merely entrusting it to us. And one of the conditions of that trust is that we share what we have with those who have less. So, if you don't give to people in need, you can hardly call yourself a Jew. Even the most unbelieving Jew knows that.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
Happiness is not made by what we own. It is what we share.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
Marriage, sanctified by the bond of fidelity, is the nearest life gets to a work of art.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
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.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
Hope, even more than necessity, is the mother of invention.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
We do not always appreciate the role the Queen has played in one of the most significant changes in the past 60 years: the transformation of Britain into a multi-ethnic, multi-faith society. No one does interfaith better than the Royal family, and it starts with the Queen herself.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
Science will explain how but not why. It talks about what is, not what ought to be. Science is descriptive, not prescriptive it can tell us about causes but it cannot tell us about purposes. Indeed, science disavows purposes.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
We have no idea where the world is going, except that it's going there very fast.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
Values are tapes we play on the Walkman of the mind: any tune we choose so long as it does not disturb others.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
The Holocaust survivors are among the most inspiring people I have had the privilege to meet.
Jonathan Sacks
Image
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.
Jonathan Sacks