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"Long before man traveled into space, rabbis debated how one would observe Shabbat there-not because they anticipated space travel but because Buddhists strive to live with questions and Jews would rather die."
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"The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way: an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body."

"I'VE NEVER BEEN VERY SURE ABOUT WHAT IS RIGHT, said Bill Door. I AM NOT SURE THERE IS SUCH A THING AS RIGHT. OR WRONG. JUST PLACES TO STAND."

"Let each person decide his or her fate."

"Our age not only does not have a very sharp eye for the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace, it no longer has much feeling for the nature of the violences which precede and follow them."

"There is no such thing as reincarnation, but only similar incarnation."

"Mind and Soul are one and the same thing."

"Beauty, love with truth, that is all there is."

"Science without Philosophy leads to chaos. Philosophy without Science leads to nowhere. Only together they can construct a better world."

"...an age-old patter that seemed like chaos but was not..."

"It is always, first Self, then everything else."
Explore more quotes by Jonathan Safran Foer

"I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it."

"I' was the last word I was able to speak aloud, which is a terrible thing, but there it is, I would walk around the neighborhood saying, 'I I I I.' 'You want a cup of coffee, Thomas?''I.' 'And maybe something sweet?''I.' 'How about this weather?''I.' 'You look upset. Is anything wrong?' I wanted to say, 'Of course,' I wanted to ask, 'Is anything right?' I wanted to pull the thread, unravel the scarf of my silence and start again from the beginning, but instead I said 'I.' I know I'm not alone in this disease, you hear the old people in the street and some of them are moaning, 'Ay yay yay,' but some of them are clinging to their last word, 'I,' they're saying, because they're desperate, it's not a complaint, it's a prayer, and then I lost 'I' and my silence was complete."

"I went to my grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, and asked her to write a letter. She was my mother's mother. Your father's mother's mother's mother. I hardly knew her. I didn't have any interest in knowing her. I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me.What kind of letter? my grandmother asked.I told her to write whatever she wanted to write.You want a letter from me? she asked.I told her yes.Oh, God bless you, she said.The letter she gave me was sixty-seven pages long. It was the story of her life. She made my request into her own. Listen to me."

"Not responding is a response--we are equally responsible for what we don't do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle."

"He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father."

"I am always sad, I think. Perhaps this signifies that I am not sad at all, because sadness is something lower than your normal disposition, and I am always the same thing. Perhaps I am the only person in the world, then, who never becomes sad. Perhaps I am lucky."

"If we were to one day encounter a form of life more powerful and intelligent than our own, and it regarded us as we regard fish, what would be our argument against being eaten?"

"Needless to say, jamming deformed, drugged, overstressed birds together in a filthy, waste-coated room is not very healthy. Beyond deformities, eye damage, blindness, bacterial infections of bones, slipped vertebrae, paralysis, internal bleeding, anemia, slipped tendons, twisted lower legs and necks, respiratory diseases, and weakened immune systems are frequent and long-standing problems on factory farms."
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