We have confused God with Santa Claus. And we believe that prayer means making a list of everything you don’t have but want and trying to persuade God you deserve it. Now I’m sorry, that’s not God, that’s Santa Claus.
Why do bad things happen to good people?
You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.
The small choices and decisions we make a hundred times a day add up to determining the kind of world we live in.
The path to God is rarely a steady climb upward. We climb, we fall back, and we climb higher again.
Children need parents who will let them grow up to be themselves, but parents often have personal agendas they try to impose on their children.
One of the sages of the Talmud taught nearly 200 years ago that God could have created a plant that would grow loaves of bread. Instead He created wheat for us to mill and bake into bread. Why? So that we could be HIs partners in completing the work of creation.
Only a life of goodness and honesty leaves us feeling spiritually healthy and human.
We cannot live without the knowledge that someone cares about us.
When a mentally retarded child is born, the religious question we often ask is, “Why does God let this happen?” The better question to pose is to ask, “What kind of community should we be so that mental retardation isn’t a barrier to the enjoyment of one’s full humanity?”
Integrity is not something that grownups have and adolescents can aspire to. Integrity is something that all of us, at all ages, are constantly striving for.
There is a Jewish notion that holiness is found with other people. To understand what life really is, one has to share it.
That is why we have to make room in our lives for people who may sometimes disappoint or exasperate us. If we hold our friends to a standard of perfection, or if they do that to us, we will end up far lonelier than we want to be.
History is written by winners, so most history books are about people who win.
The God I believe in is not so fragile that you hurt Him by being angry at him, or so petty that He will hold it against you for being upset with Him.
I believe that God is totally moral, but nature, one of God’s creatures, is not moral. Nature is blind.
When I talk to people who feel this emptiness and lack of fulfillment, I recommend they find a source of balance in their lives. I suggest they find a way to “give back” to the world in order to feel a sense of completeness...
I wish i spent more time at the office.
Seek something outside your nine-to-five job as an additional source of fulfillment and as a way to feel the joy of helping others.
Our human bodies are miracles, not because they defy laws of nature, but precisely because they obey them.
It explains why people come home from work or school and immediately switch on the television. They are not interested in the program much of the time, they do not even know what is on. But they are desperate for the sound of another human voice in their lives.