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"I argue that the Talmud is about the constant struggle to understand."
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"Fear says that what God has called me to is blatantly impossible. Selfishness says that the cost is unacceptably prohibitive. My humanity harbors other lesser agendas that seduce me to my own death. And I would be wise to believe none of it."

"I was the chain that bit into my ankle, and I was the ruthless guard that never slept."

"I realized that it was not as easy to commit suicide as to contemplate it. And since then, whenever I have heard of someone threatening to commit suicide, it has had little or no effect on me."

"The struggle is beautiful."

"The houses have been condemned on Memory LaneI'm tired of this struggle that leaves everything the sameI've tried so hard to make it workthat I'm dying insideWell, you can take my pastBut you can't have my tomorrowPromises that remain promises are useless and they're cheapI wish I could put a price on words so I could make them keepI put so much faith in youI lost all my faith in meWell, you can take my pastBut you can't have my tomorrowI'm giving up on giving upI can't leave it all to prayer'Cause the first step in getting betteris knowing what's not thereYou said you'd make it betterand that just makes it worseWell, you can take my pastBut you can't have my tomorrowYes, I want my life to lastSo you can't have my tomorrowNo, you can't have my tomorrow."

"But struggling with these better feelings was pride,--the vice of the lowest and most debased creatures no less than of the high and self-assured. The miserable companion of thieves and ruffians, the fallen outcast of low haunts, the associate of the scourings of the jails and hulks, living within the shadow of the gallows itself,--even this degraded being felt too proud to betray a feeble gleam of the womanly feeling which she thought a weakness, but which alone conneced her with that humanity, of which her wasting life had obliterated so many, many traces when a very child."

"God has called His creation to find satisfaction in a personal relationship with Him, and stop trying to manage the world by conforming it to our expectations, and to allow Him to govern His creation. He continues to say through an ancient Hebrew worship song, 'Be still and know that I am God!"

"You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it--all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition."

"Everybody was in struggle, in the grind trying to make it."
Explore more quotes by Arthur Hertzberg

"Look, the hard-line Jewish position is based, to this day, on the idea that the Palestinian Arabs somehow or other will either accept third-class status, or they will pick up and go away. Now, this isn't happening."

"Jewish fundamentalism is teaching that Jews can fight with guns and with civil war, against being relocated off the West Bank, and disobey the orders of their government. That is the call to jihad, to several kinds of jihad."

"The Roosevelt enactment of Social Security was a moral revolution in our country: We were assured that we would never reach the very depths of poverty. And to be told, that we are now going to gamble it, on Wall Street, is nonsense!"

"But, I know enough people in that court, through the years, to know one thing: There's always somebody who surprises you, who rises above what they thought they appointed him for, and stays with the separation of powers, and with the right of the law to decide."

"I don't know where Bush is going - yet. But, Sharon obviously - I wrote somewhere in the last several months, that Sharon has adopted, essentially, the position of the Labor Party: that the Palestinians are here to stay."

"I write to tell my grandchildren where they come from, and what their grandparents were up to, and I hope they will in their own way continue. I invite anyone else to listen in."

"A large part of the problem, is that young people are being born into the world and growing up without much hope. And so, they become murderers, they become suicide bombers."

"Most American Jews came from the lower middle classes, and therefore they brought with them not a lot of Jewish culture. The American Jewish story starts with Ellis Island, and the candy store in the Bronx."
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