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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

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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
Science
Descriptive
Tell
Talks
Cannot
Purposes
Explain
Indeed
Ought
Causes
Purpose
Prescriptive

More quotes by Jonathan Sacks

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No great achiever - even those who made it seem easy - ever succeeded without hard work.
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The universe is more than mere matter in motion. It and we were brought into being by a Creator who seeks our good.
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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.
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Science takes things apart to see how they work. Religion puts things together to see what they mean.
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As the political leaders of Europe meet to save the euro and European Union, so should religious leaders.
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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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Man was not made for the service of economies economies were made to serve mankind and men and women were made - so we believe - to serve one another, not just ourselves.
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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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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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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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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
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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
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The faith religious believers have in God is small compared to the faith people put in politicians, knowing how many times they have been disappointed in the past but still insisting that this time it will be different.
Jonathan Sacks
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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.
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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
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In Judaism faith means wrestling with God as Jacob once wrestled with an angel.
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Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holy of holies of Jewish time. It is that rarest of phenomena, a Jewish festival without food. Instead it is a day of fasting and prayer, introspection and self-judgment when, collectively and repeatedly, we confess our sins and pray to be written into God's Book of Life.
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Jews know this in their bones. Our community could not exist for a day without its volunteers. They are the lifeblood of our organizations, whether they involve welfare, youth, education, care of the sick and elderly, or even protection against violence and abuse.
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Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good... There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious community that makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighborliness.
Jonathan Sacks
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Cyberspace can't compensate for real space. We benefit from chatting to people face to face.
Jonathan Sacks