Jews

""[of Kierkegaard's behavior towards his ex-fiance Regine] There isn't the slightest reason to condemn him, but every call to attempt to understand him". "[Kierkegaard is] the mystery, the great mystery"."

"I was very much surprised when Mill informed me that he had not read a line of Hegel, either in the original or in translation, and regarded the entire Hegelian philosophy as sterile and empty sophistry. I mentally confronted this with the opinion of the man at the Copenhagen University who knew the history of philosophy best, my teacher, Hans Brochner, who knew, so to speak, nothing of contemporary English and French philosophy, and did not think them worth studying. I came to the conclusion that here was a task for one who understood the thinkers of the two directions, who did not mutually understand one another. I thought that in philosophy, too, I knew what I wanted, and saw a road open in front of me."

"It would be as impossible for me to attack Christianity as it would be impossible for me to attack werewolves."

"The stream of time sweeps away errors, and leaves the truth for the inheritance of humanity."

"The crowd will follow a leader who marches twenty steps in advance; but if he is a thousand steps in front of them, they do not see and do not follow him, and any literary freebooter who chooses may shoot him with impunity."

"For long ages, too, no notice whatever was taken of the criminal’s “sin”; he was regarded as harmful, not guilty, and looked upon as a piece of destiny; and the criminal on his side took his punishment as a piece of destiny which had overtaken him, and bore it with the same fatalism … In general we may say that punishment tames the man, but does not make him “better.”"

"Those [Christians] had left to love on earth were then: brothers and sisters in hatred, whom they called then: brothers and sisters in love."

"What [Nietzsche] calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared became obedience; inability to assert one’s self became reluctance to assert one’s self, became forgiveness, love of one’s enemies. Misery became a distinction"

"In opposition to the aristocratic valuation (good = noble, beautiful, happy, favoured by the gods) the slave morality then is this: The wretched alone are the good; those who suffer and are heavy laden, the sick and the ugly, they are the only pious ones. On the other hand, you, ye noble and rich, are to all eternity the evil, the cruel, the insatiate, the ungodly, and after death the damned. Whereas noble morality was the manifestation of great self-esteem, a continual yea-saying, slave morality is a continual Nay, a Thou shall not, a negation. To the noble valuation good bad (bad = worthless) corresponds the antithesis of slave morality, good evil. And who are the evil in this morality of the oppressed? Precisely the same who in the other morality were the good."

"The oldest definition [of “good”] was this: the noble, the mightier, higher-placed and high-minded held themselves and their actions to be good of the first rank in contradistinction to everything low and low-minded. Noble, in the sense of the class-consciousness of a higher caste, is the primary concept from which develops good in the sense of spiritually aristocratic. The lowly are designated as bad (not evil). Bad does not acquire its unqualified depreciatory meaning till much later. In the mouth of the people it is a laudatory word; the German word schlecht is identical with schlicht (cf. schlechtweg and schlechterdings)."

"Since fresh examples and proofs could always be found of the alleged relation between guilt and punishment: if you behave in such and such a way, it will go badly with you. Now, as it generally does go badly, the allegation was constantly confirmed; and thus popular morality, a pseudo- science on a level with popular medicine, continually gained ground."

"He who feels that in his inmost being he cannot be compared with others, will be his own lawgiver. For one thing is needful: to give style to one’s character. This art is practised by him who, with an eye for the strong and weak sides of his nature, removes from it one quality and another, and then by daily practice and acquired habit replaces them by others which become second nature to him; in other words, he puts himself under restraint in order by degrees to bend his nature entirely to his own law. Only thus does a man arrive at satisfaction with himself, and only thus does he become endurable to others. For the dissatisfied and the unsuccessful as a rule avenge themselves on others. They absorb poison from everything, from their own incompetence as well as from their poor circumstances, and they live in a constant craving for revenge on those in whose nature they suspect harmony. Such people ever have virtuous precepts on their lips; the whole jingle of morality, seriousness, chastity, the claims of life; and their hearts ever burn with envy of those who have become well [harmonious] and can therefore enjoy life."

"Divine Providence only gives man as much as he is prepared to receive; if his receptive capacity be small, he obtains little, and much if it be great."

"Thou must not deem it improbable that exalted divine traces should be visible in this material world, when this matter is prepared to receive them. Here are to be found the roots of faith as well as of unbelief""

"Thy way of thinking is indeed pleasing to the Creator, but not thy way of acting"

"One of the greatest Hebrew poets, Judah ha-Levi was also an anti-rationalist. His chief work, , was a dialogue in defense of Judaism, attempting to show the superiority of to reasoned truth. He pointed out the dependence of Christianity and Islam upon Judaism; he regarded the as possessed of a unique religious sense and Palestine as an unequalled region."

"This means that Jerusalem can only be rebuilt when Israel yearns for it to such an extent that they embrace her stones and dust."

"As regards the Sādōcaeans and Boēthosians, they are the sectarians who are anathemised in our prayer. The followers of Jesus are "the Baptists" who adopted the doctrine of baptism, being baptized in the Jordan.""

"The pious man is nothing but a prince who is obeyed by his senses, and by his mental as well as his physical faculties"

"According to our view a servant of God is not one who detaches himself from the world, lest he be a burden to it, and it to him; or hates life, which is one of God's bounties granted to him."

"One of the greatest problems for international journalists covering the Middle East is that people who serves as guides for journalists are often affiliated with Islamic terrorists seeking to turn for foreign visitors against Israel."

"Why do I live in Israel? Because Israel lives in me, as it lives in all Jews. It is who we are. And those of us lucky enough to recognize this truth and embrace it in all its fullness and depth are the luckiest Jews in the world."

"I believe that it is an honor beyond measure that Bar Ilan University and the Rennert Center would deem it proper to cast me among the ranks of our greatest defenders and champions. I know I do not deserve this distinction. I certainly do not believe that I have earned it. But I do know that since childhood I have strived to emulate the image of the watchman-or watchwoman-on the walls of Zion. And I pledge that I will continue throughout my life to strive to earn the distinction you bestow on me tonight."

"When you ignore what people are saying on a daily basis, calling for the annihilation of your country, you are ignoring them at your own risk."

"Our enemies — whether Shiite or Sunni — are followers of a totalitarian ideology based on Islam, which tells them that Allah wishes to rule the world through them. Israel is a central front in this war. Given the weakness of Western support for the Jews, jihadists see attacking Israel as a strategic tool for eroding the West’s ideological defenses and shoring up their supporters throughout the world."

"Perhaps the central reason that Ahmadinejad’s message, and the hundreds of thousands of voices echoing his call throughout the world, are so dangerous is because the Free World is making precious little effort to assert its own message."

"There is no "worst" in what is new. Everything that has existed is bad, or else no one would have improved upon it by revolution and change."

"Radio through television becomes a species of Cinema. Why shouldn't Cinema, in turn, become a species of radio?"

"There are so many films from which one leaves as stupid as one entered. I'd rather give you a migraine than nothing at all … I'd rather ruin your eyes than leave you indifferent."

"From the point of view of photography, I'll smite the picture with sun rays. I'll take old stock shots and scratch them; I'll claw at them so that unknown beauty sees the light of day. I shall sculpt flowers upon the film stock."

"Our only means of original manifestation is to vomit these old masterpieces. Masterful spittle is our only opportunity to create within the Cinema our masterpieces. That's what Picasso stands for. He is a creator of deglutition and spittle, of old well-digested canvases."

"In my pictures I would use speech as an extra dimension supplementing the image … Speech would not come off the screen in coincidence with the sequences, but from without, as if it were a surplus unconnected with the organism - a cravat of drivel hung on an ivory tooth."

"The evolution of art has nothing to do with the revolution of society."

"The Cinema is too rich; it is obese."

"The rigidity of forms impedes their transmission."

"I desire you, and all that comes with you. If I could only buy you and enjoy you, without having to go through all the formalities, without having to consider your personality et cetera … There is nothing as boring as human personality."

"Your hissing and your booing make no impression on me, because from Victor Hugo's "Ernani" to Buñel's "The Age of Gold," Cannes Grand Prize winner, everything I have loved has always been hissed and booed at first. At the premiere of "The Age of Gold" the angry audience broke the theatre seats. What worse can happen to me, and how can that affect me? The seats do not belong to me."

"It is said that the public is stupid. That's why those who hold it in contempt never dare to offer it something original."

"The flourishing of bursts of energy dies beyond us."

"One has to stress once again, that the mechanical world view and psychophysical interpretation accompanying it are based not on the instructions of the philosophizing mind, but on the clear and accurate facts discovered by experiment and observation; and in the cases of non-correspondence (very rare, fortunately) between the requirements of the mind and the facts, reason must adjust to the facts, and not vice versa."

"It would be interesting to use high temperatures - in the billions, which develop during atomic bomb explosions, for conducting synthetic reactions (for example, the formation of helium from hydrogen), which are the source of energy of stars and which could raise the energy liberated during the explosion of basic matter (uranium, bismuth, lead) even higher."

"The Chinese and their government are wedded to a different conception of society and polity: community-based rather than individualist, state-centric rather than liberal, authoritarian rather than democratic. China has 2,000 years of history as a distinct civilization from which to draw strength. It will not simply fold under Western values and institutions."

"The threat is stronger than the execution."

"The beauty of a move lies not in its appearance but in the thought behind it."

"The Bundists did not wait for the Messiah, nor did they plan to leave for Palestine. They believed that Poland was their country and they fought for a just, socialist Poland, in which each nationality would have its own cultural autonomy, and in which minorities' rights would be guaranteed."

"Man is evil, by nature man is a beast. People have to be educated from childhood, from kindergarten, that there should be no hatred."

"To be a Jew means always being with the oppressed and never the oppressors."

"South Africa's most feisty politician."

"If the 60-year old MP for Yeoville is occasionally oversensitive, it is probably because - as one of the most talented and versatile people in Parliament - he finds himself frustrated by much of what goes on."

"You’re the last person who will dictate to me!"