On Being Jewish - from those who aren't

Motek

Tue, Sep 25 2007, 9:41 pm

Glad you like it Smile

Here are some more quotes:

Quote:

"Mankind, East and West, Christian and Muslim, accepted the Jewish conviction that there is only one G-d. Today it is polytheism that is so difficult to understand, that is so unthinkable."

- T.R. Grover, The Ancient World, p. 186

Quote:

"The Jews, however, are beyond all doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race at present living in Europe; they know how to succeed even under the worst conditions (in fact better than under favorable ones) by means of virtues of some sort, which one would like nowadays to label as vices-owing above all to a resolute faith which does not need to be ashamed before "modern idea...

It is certain that the Jew, if he desired-or if they were driven to it, as the antisemites seem to wish-could now have the ascendancy, nay, literally the supremacy, over Europe; that they are not working or planning for that end is equally sure... The resourcefulness of the modern Jews, both in mind and soul, is extraordinary..."

- Friedrich Nietzsche
German Philosopher (1844 - 1900)

Motek

Tue, Sep 25 2007, 9:43 pm

Quote:

"Asked to make a list of the men who have most dominated the thinking of the modern world, many educated people would name Freud, Einstein, Marx and Darwin. Of these four, only Darwin was not Jewish. In a world where Jews are only a tiny percentage of the population, what is the secret of the disproportionate importance the Jews have had in the history of Western culture?"

- Ernest van den Haag, The Jewish Mystique
(New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1971, pg. 13
(God and the Astronomers [New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1978], 116. Professor Jastrow was the founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute, now director of the Mount Wilson Institute and its observatory

Quote:

"Energy is the basis of everything. Every Jew, no matter how insignificant, is engaged in some decisive and immediate pursuit of a goal... It is the most perpetual people of the earth..."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
German dramatist, novelist and poet (1749 - 1832)

Motek

Mon, Oct 29 2007, 4:07 pm

Quote:

"...whatever other qualities Jews may posses, likable or the reverse, no one who knows them well can deny that they are personally interesting. By that I mean, specially alive, alert, quick at comprehending people or events and at making pungent or witty comments on them... One might at times find the rather hothouse family atmosphere, with it intensities and frictions, somewhat trying, but one could be sure of never being bored."

- Ernest Jones - British psychoanalyst (1879-1958)

Quote:

"For the Jews have long been in revolt not only against the Romans, but against humanity; and a race that has made its own life apart and irreconcilable, that cannot share with the rest of mankind in the pleasure of the table nor join in their libations or prayers or sacrifices, are separate from ourselves by a greater gulf than divides us from Sura or Bactra of the most distant Indies."

- Philostratus - The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 3rd Century CE Teacher

Quote:

"The Jews proved not only unassimilated, but inassimilable, and... the demonstration that this was so proved one of the most significant turning points in Greek history, owing to the gigantic influence exerted throughout subsequent ages by their religion, which not only survived intact, but subsequently gave birth to Christianity as well."

- Michael Grant, From Alexander to Cleopatra: the Hellenistic World

Motek

Thu, Nov 22 2007, 6:12 pm

Quote:

"Wishing to make Speyer into a city, I thought to increase its honor a thousand fold by bringing in the Jews."

- Bishop Ruediger - Huozmann - 1084

Quote:

"So prominent was the Jewish role in the foreign commerce of Europe that those nations that received the Jews gained and the countries that excluded them lost in the volume of international trade."

- Will Durant, The Story of Civilization - The Reformation. (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1953)

Quote:

"The preservation of the Jews is really one of the most signal and illustrious acts of divine Providence... and what but a supernatural power could have preserved them in such a manner as none other nation upon earth hath been preserved. Nor is the providence of God less remarkable in the destruction of their enemies, than in their preservation... We see that the great empires, which in their turn subdued and oppressed the people of God, are all come to ruin... And if such hath been the fatal end of the enemies and oppressors of the Jews, let it serve as a warning to all those, who at any time or upon any occasion are for raising a clamor and persecution against them."

- Thomas Newton - British Clergyman: Bishop of Bristol (1704-1782)

momof6

Thu, Nov 22 2007, 6:34 pm

WOW!!
Motek your amazing!!
How do you find all of these quotes!
I've always enjoyed some of Mark Twain's quotes about Jews.

Thanks for sharing!

We all realize that most of these ppl. don't love us, but they are smart enough to notice that Jews are different and share a sense of awe!

I'd like to share some of these quotes with my kids!

He*Sings*To*Me

Thu, Nov 22 2007, 6:45 pm

Piper wrote:

This is a great thread Very Happy

I second that, Piper! Thumbs Up

Thank You, Motek! For whatever reason you chose to launch this thread, it has been a pleasure! I appreciate the time and effort you invested putting thi together for us!

Motek

Sun, Nov 25 2007, 9:02 pm

Quote:

Our survey of three and a half millennia of Jewish history is closed. But the story which we have set ourselves to tell is unending. Today, the Jewish people has in it still those elements of strength and endurance which enabled it to surmount all the crises of its past, surviving thus the most powerful empires of antiquity.

Throughout our history there have been weaker elements who have shirked the sacrifices which Judaism entailed. They have been swallowed, long since, in the great majority; only the more stalwart have carried on the traditions of their ancestors, and can now look back with pride upon their superb heritage. Are we to be numbered with he weak majority, or with the stalwart minority? It is for ourselves to decide."

- Cecil Roth, A History of the Jews
(Oxford University: Shocken Books, 1961) pg. 423

Motek

Sun, Nov 25 2007, 9:03 pm

Quote:

"...it would be a mistake...to ascribe to Roman legal conceptions an undivided sway over the development of law and institutions during the Middle Ages... The Laws of Moses as well as the laws of Rome contributed suggestions and impulse to the men and institutions which were to prepare the modern world; and if we could have but eyes to see... we should readily discover how very much besides religion we owe to the Jew."

- U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in his The State

Quote:

This people are not eminent solely by their antiquity, but are also singular by their duration, which has always continued from their origin till now. For, whereas the nations of Greece and of Italy, of Lacedaemon, of Athens and of Rome, and others who came long after, have long since perished, these ever remain, and in spite of the endeavors of many powerful kings who have a hundred times tried to destroy them, as their historians testify, and as it is easy to conjecture from the natural order of things during so long a space of years, they have nevertheless been preserved (and this preservation has been foretold); and extending from the earliest times to the latest, their history comprehends in its duration all our histories (which it preceded by a long time).

- Pensees by Blaise Pascal (1623-1662

Motek

Sun, Dec 09 2007, 2:23 pm

Quote:

Only if you have some knowledge of the human sacrifices, the vicious temple rites, the degrading superstitions and customs that were practiced . . . can you realize how much the modern world owes to the Hebrew prophets, whose monotheism and moral teachings entered into Christianity and Islam….

- from Ancient and medieval history,
by Carlton J. H. Hayes and Parker Thomas Moon

Quote:

"No ancient people have had a stranger history than the Jews. … The history of no ancient people should be so valuable, if we could only recover it and understand it. … Stranger still, the ancient religion of the Jews survives, when all the religions of every ancient race of the pre-Christian world have disappeared … Again it is strange that the living religions of the world all build on religious ideas derived from the Jews. …. The great matter is not “What happened?” but “Why did it happen?” Why does Judaism live?"

T.R. Glover
(The Ancient World, Penguin, pp. 184-191)

Motek

Thu, Jan 03 2008, 8:48 pm

Quote:

This one book (the Bible) ... has attracted to it, and had concentrated on it, vastly more thought and has called forth more works, explanatory, illustrative, apologetic, upon its text, its meaning, its geography, its theology, its chronology, its evidences, its inspiration, its origin, than all the rest of the literature of the world put together. An immense bulk of the world's literature owes its origin to this book."

- Carlyle B Heynes in The Bible, Is it a True Book

Quote:

There is a striking point that runs through Jewish history as a whole. Western civilization was born in the Middle East, and the Jews were at its crossroads. In the heyday of Rome, the Jews were close to the Empire's center. When power shifted eastward, the Jewish center was in Babylon; when it skipped to Spain, there again were the Jews. When in the Middle Ages the center of civilization moved into Central Europe, the Jews were waiting for it in Germany and Poland. The rise of the United States to the leading world power found Judaism focused there. And now, today, when the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward the Old World and the East rises to renewed importance, there again are the Jews in Israel..."

- Professor Huston Smith
The Religious of Man, New York: HarperCollins, 1989

Motek

Thu, Jan 03 2008, 8:48 pm

Quote:

The struggle for world domination is between me and the Jews. All else is meaningless. The Jews have inflicted two wounds on the world: Circumcision for the body and conscience for the soul. I come to free mankind from their shackles."

"When over long periods of human history I scrutinized the activity of the Jewish people, suddenly there arose up in me the fearful question whether inscrutable Destiny, perhaps for reasons unknown to us poor mortals, did not, with eternal and immutable resolve, desire the final victory of this little nation." (Mein Kampf, p.64)

"The Ten Commandments have lost their validity…Conscience is a Jewish invention. It is a blemish like circumcision…"

- Adolph Hitler
(Herman Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, p. 220) (more Hitler Quotes)
(click for why do people hate the Jews?)

mimivan

Sun, Jun 22 2008, 8:40 pm

Motek wrote:

Quote:

Wow, he blames us for conscience...

mimivan

Sun, Jun 22 2008, 8:43 pm

The actor Jon Voight's Comments during his visit to Sderot, Israel:

Quote:

“Think how many Jewish parents, Jewish families have suffered like that for 3,000 years,” Voight, who is not Jewish, told Channel 10 news reporters, “And there’s still the Jewish People.”
The actor’s visit wasn’t about a photo-opportunity, but expressed one man’s enduring love and support for the Jewish People in their hour of need. “The story of the Jewish nation is the greatest story in the history of humankind,” he told Lubavitch.com. “I tell stories, so I know