Jonathan Sacks Quotes

Of all the bigotries that savage the human temper there is none so stupid as the anti-Semitic.

I believe I understand anti-Semitism which is a very complex movement. I see it as a Jew, but without hatred or fear. I recognize what is anti-Semitism is rude jesting, vulgar jealousy of métier, hereditary prejudice; but also what can be considered as in fact legitimate defence.

Acts of anti-Semitism in countries throughout the world, including some of the world's strongest democracies, have increased significantly in frequency and scope over the last several years.

While our country has made great strides, the Jewish community is still the target of anti-Semitism, and we must continue to stand against all forms of hate, violence, and bigotry.

[A]nti-Semitism was rife in almost all varieties of socialism.

Their [the Jews] rotten and unbending stiffneckedness deserves that they be oppressed unendingly and without measure or end and that they die in their misery without the pity of anyone.

With little knowledge of what it meant to be a Jew, I found myself passionately defending the Jewish people. Now, half a century later, I have to defend my son. Anti-Semitism, I've seen, is like a disease that goes dormant, flaring up with the next political trigger.

And I certainly don’t like the white supremacists and those whose religion is hating the Jews, period.

Whether religious or racial, anti-Semitism is always repugnant, one of the most destructive manifestations of human stupidity and evil. What is profoundly expressed in it is man's traditional mistrust of the man who is not part of his tribe, that 'other' who speaks a different language, whose skin is a different color, and who participates in mysterious rites and rituals.

There is not anti-semitism as an ideology. The civilized world must think that anti-semitism is stupid.

Anti-Semitism is a noxious weed that should be cut out. It has no place in America.

What strikes the historian surveying anti-Semitism worldwide over more than two millennia is its fundamental irrationality. It seems to make no sense, any more than malaria or meningitis makes sense.

There was no reason to label us as anti-Semitic.

I think all Nazis didn't see themselves as bad people. I've never met a racist yet who thought he was a racist. Or an anti-Semite who thought they were anti-Semitic.

Someone asked me years ago if it were true that I disliked Jews, and I replied that it was certainly true, not at all because they are Jews but because they are folks, and I don't like folks.

There is something uncannily adaptive about anti-Semitism: the way it can hide, unsuspected, in the most progressive minds.

The paradox of anti-Semitism is that it is invariably up to the Jews to explain away the charges. The anti-Semite simply has to make them.

Like many physical diseases, anti-Semitism is highly infectious, and can become endemic in certain localities and societies. Though a disease of the mind, it is by no means confined to weak, feeble, or commonplace intellects; as history sadly records, its carriers have included men and women of otherwise powerful and subtle thoughts.

Some ticket buyers think they don't like Jews.

We represent the majority of the people in Alabama who hate niggerism, Catholicism, Judaism, and all the isms of the whole world.

These Jews seem to think of nothing but making money and sexual indulgence …. Ninety-Five percent of these folks are Jews of Eastern European lineage. They are probably the scum of the earth.

Muslims have been hating us for centuries ….

… whose hatred of the Jews in unbridgeable.

Demonizing the other does not help our cause and does bad things to us.

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosives and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy. And a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own