While everyone else is thinking about economics and politics, executive salaries and the future of the euro, do the opposite, even if it's hard. Invest in the spirit. Jonathan Sacks More Quotes by Jonathan Sacks More Quotes From Jonathan Sacks In her religious role, the Queen is head of the Church of England, but in her civic role she cares for all her subjects, and no one is better at making everyone she meets feel valued. Jonathan Sacks queens church religious 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 focus soul religious Why did God create mankind? Because God likes stories. Jonathan Sacks mankind likes stories God is back and Europe as a whole still doesn't get it. It is our biggest single collective cultural and intellectual blind spot. Jonathan Sacks blind-spots intellectual europe The evidence shows that religious people - defined by regular attendance at a place of worship - actually do make better neighbours. Jonathan Sacks attendance religious people There's always hope. You can lose everything else in the world, but Jews never lose hope. Jonathan Sacks never-lose-hope jew world People are feeling and sensing a return of anti-Semitism - even in Europe, which, seventy years after the Holocaust, is a very scary thing. I think they are feeling that Israel is very isolated and doesn't always get what they see as fair treatment in the European media. Jonathan Sacks media israel thinking We should challenge the relativism that tells us there is no right or wrong, when every instinct of our mind knows it is not so, and is a mere excuse to allow us to indulge in what we believe we can get away with. A world without values quickly becomes a world without value. Jonathan Sacks indulge-in challenges believe Which European leader today would not relish the wonder-working powers of a Moses? Budget deficit? Unpopular cuts? How about just a little miracle, an overnight increase in gold reserves, a new oil field, or the next world-changing communications technology? Surely that's not too much to ask. Jonathan Sacks cutting communication technology It is through exchange that difference becomes a blessing, not a curse. Jonathan Sacks curse differences blessing 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 shopping running commitment We from every religion feel comfortable in Britain because there is a host. The Church of England is a good host, it has been a major force in shaping England into such a tolerant society. Jonathan Sacks host england church Religion is the best antidote to the individualism of the consumer age. The idea that society can do without it flies in the face of history and, now, evolutionary biology. Jonathan Sacks age faces ideas I do not want to suggest that you have to be religious to be moral. Jonathan Sacks moral religious want 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. Jonathan Sacks religious dream home Jews have deep respect for the Queen and the royal family. We say a prayer for them every Sabbath in synagogue. We recite a special blessing on seeing the Queen. Jonathan Sacks queens prayer blessing In the post-enlightenment Europe of the 19th century the highest authority was no longer the Church. Instead it was science. Thus was born racial anti-Semitism, based on two disciplines regarded as science in their day - the 'scientific study of race' and the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel. Jonathan Sacks race europe two Jews survived all the defeats, expulsions, persecutions and pogroms, the centuries in which they were regarded as a pariah people, even the Holocaust itself, because they never gave up the faith that one day they would be free to live as Jews without fear. Jonathan Sacks holocaust one-day people 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 affliction slavery alternatives Sometimes the sight of someone in one faith wrestling with that faith can empower you to wrestle with another faith. For me, it was reading about how the Catholic Church wrestled with itself in the 1960s. Pope John XXIII set Nostra Aetate - the Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions - in motion. It changed the relationship between Jews and Catholics. Today, Jews and Catholics meet as friends. If you can do that, after the longest history of hatred the world has known, that empowers you as a Jew or a Muslim to wrestle with your faith. Jonathan Sacks empowering reading wrestling
