Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent.
Jonathan SacksRead
Stabilizing the euro is one thing, healing the culture that surrounds it is another. A world in which material values are everything and spiritual values nothing is neither a stable state nor a good society. The time has come for us to recover the Judeo-Christian ethic of human dignity in the image of God.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the need to balance material and spiritual values in society.
Jonathan Sacks highlights the importance of not only stabilizing economic systems like the euro but also addressing the deeper cultural issues that prioritize materialism over human dignity and spiritual values. He calls for a return to the Judeo-Christian ethic, which promotes a recognition of human dignity rooted in the concept of being made in the image of God, suggesting that a society's true stability lies in its spiritual and ethical foundations rather than solely in its economic prosperity.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about cultural values in economic crises.
Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent.
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.
Why did God create mankind? Because God likes stories.
Find people not to envy but to admire. Do not the profitable but the admirable deed. Live by ideals.
Some years ago there was a study to discover the most stressful occupation. It turned out not to be the head of a large business, football manager or prime minister, but rather: bus driver.
The Holocaust survivors are among the most inspiring people I have had the privilege to meet.
The real cause of hunger is the powerlessness of the poor to gain access to the resources they need to feed themselves.
Kids can't see us bombing, and then listen to us _x000D_ _x000D_ talking about getting guns out of the schools. _x000D_ _x000D_ How can we tell them to solve problems without violence, _x000D_ _x000D_ if, in fact, we can't show an ability to solve problems _x000D_ _x000D_ without violence?
For the Baul, life is not a serious thing. It is fun, it is laughter, it is joy. So you cannot find anything like the seriousness of a church-goer, or the long faces of so-called religious people in the world of the Bauls. They love laughter, they love fun. They enjoy small things with tremendous respect. Ordinarily, religions are very long-faced, very sombre, serious, because they have to be - they are against life.
Keep in mind that you are always saying "no" to something. If it isn't to the apparent and urgent things in your life, it is probably to the most fundamental, highly important things.
I believe that the human motive to share is very powerful. The human motive to profit is also very powerful, and I think that the profit motive and the sharing motive are not exclusive.
When people talk, they lay lines on each other, do a lot of role playing, sidestep, shilly-shally and engage in all manner of vagueness and innuendo. We do this and expect others to do it, yet at the same time we profess to long for the plain truth, for people to say what they mean, simple as that. Such hypocrisy is a human universal.
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