Jonathan Sacks Quotes

Until the day of his death, no man can be sure of his courage.

Everyone asks, Will he make it, will she make it? You never make it.

We don't like admitting this, but it is a key component of human existence: the fact that life has the potential for things both wondrous and horrific.

Latin Americans hold on tight even to pain and suffering, preferring a certain present to an uncertain future. Some of this is only natural, entirely human. But for us, the fear is paralyzing; it generates not only anxiety but also paralysis.

You get rid of the fear of death by understanding that it is an integral fact of our existence. You do that through will and reason.

Many things are unknown to the wisest, and the best men can never wholly divest themselves of passions and affections... nothing can or ought to be permanent but that which is perfect.

I didn't think I was going to die. I knew some did. I knew there were some rumors.

I am convinced that it is not the fear of death, of our lives ending that haunts our sleep so much as the fear... that as far as the world is concerned, we might as well never have lived.

The unknown used to be really scary, just that fear of, 'What's next? What if I'm not prepared?' I just don't feel that way anymore. I feel like the best is yet to come.

The passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.

Hope--danger's comforter

If your worst fear can come true, and everything can still be OK, then there's really not much to fear at all.

No one has ever understood anything better by assuming that there is no reason for why it is the way it is.

As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the 'spirited element.'

I'd like to end the book a lot of ways. Except I don't have any answers. Use your common sense. Be nice. This is the best I can do. All the trouble in the world is human trouble. Well, that's not true. But when cancer cells run amok and burst out of the prostate and take over the liver and lymph glands and end up killing everything in the body including themselves, they certainly are acting like some humans we know.

This could all end at any moment...Therefore, be self-controlled.

He seemed to be talking about my fears, my insecurity, and my unwillingness to see what was wonderful because tomorrow it might disappear and I might suffer. The gods throw the dice, and they don't ask whether we want to be in the game or not.

Why do we argue? Life's so fragile, a successful virus clinging to a speck of mud, suspended in endless nothing.

When men die, they die in fear", he said. "They take everything they need from you, and as a doctor it is your job to give it, to comfort them, to hold their hand. But children die how they have been living - in hope. They don't know what's happening, so they expect nothing, they don't ask you to hold their hand - but you end up needing them to hold yours. With children, you're on your own. Do you understand?

Every man beholds his human condition with a degree of melancholy. As a ship aground is battered by the waves, so man, imprisonedin mortal life, lies open to the mercy of coming events.

What's the point of trying to fix a world we're so briefly in?

A man without hope is a man without fear.

There was more courage in bearing trouble than in escaping from it; the brave and the energetic cling to hope, even in spite of fortune; the cowardly and the indolent are hurried by their fears,' said Plotius Firmus, Roman Praetorian Guard.

Hope, it is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous.