Jews
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Quotes about Jews
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- I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of the other sect, who believe, or pretend to believe that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.
- John Adams, in a letter to F. A. Vanderkemp (16 February 1809), as quoted in The Roots of American Order (1974) by Russel Kirk.
- Paraphrased variant: The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.
- The Jews started it all—and by ‘it’ I mean so many of the things we care about, the underlying values that make all of us, Jew and Gentile, believer and aethiest, tick. Without the Jews, we would see the world through different eyes, hear with different ears, even feel with different feelings … we would think with a different mind, interpret all our experience differently, draw different conclusions from the things that befall us. And we would set a different course for our lives.
- Thomas Cahill, in The Gifts Of The Jews (1999)
- The dispersion of the Jews was both a boon and a bane; their nation was disjoined, but their culture was enormously enhanced. Whereas a unique omneitic outlook set the Jews apart from other peoples, a common language, literacy and learning bound the disparate Jewish communities together and provided a firm foundation for further creativity. The exercise of this multifaceted creative propensity rebounded to benefit not only the societies that harbored the Jews, but all humankind.
- Samuel Karlinsky, in The Eight Day - The Hidden History of the Jewish Contribution to Civilzation (1994)
- After all, Jews invented psychiatry to help other Jews become gentiles.
- Morton Feldman, in Give My Regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman (2000)
- "Fucking Jews... Jews are responsible for all wars in the world."
- The immemorial ingratitude of rulers and commonwealths is proverbial. Especially common is ingratitude to Israel - the People that has achieved so much of eternal worth, but has rarely succeeded in winning gratitude.
- Joseph H. Hertz, The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (One-volume edition), p.206.
- [T]he evidence from anthropology concurs with history in refuting the popular belief in a Jewish race descended from the biblical tribe. From the anthropologist's point of view, two groups of facts militate against this belief: the wide diversity of Jews with regard to physical characteristics, and their similarity to the Gentile population amidst whom they live. Both are reflected in the statistics about bodily height, cranial index, blood-groups, hair and eye colour, etc. Whichever of these anthropological criteria is taken as an indicator, it shows a greater similarity between Jews and their Gentile host-nation than between Jews living in different countries. (...).The obvious biological explanation for both phenomena is miscegenation, which took different forms in different historical situations: intermarriage, large-scale proselytizing, rape as a constant (legalized or tolerated) accompaniment of war and pogrom
- Arthur Koestler, in "The Thirteenth Tribe" (1976)
- "In all of nature, a male belongs to a female that he fancies and who fancies him. And so among the animals there are no idiots. But with us!... I'm a Jew, so I musn't love a Christian woman... He's a merchant, so he's got no right to a countess... And you who've got no money, you've no rights to any woman at all..."
- Bolesław Prus, The Doll (1889).
- Having a ham sandwich on the afternoon of Yom Kippur doesn’t make you less Jewish.
- Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet, [1]
- What is the Jew?...What kind of unique creature is this whom all the rulers of all the nations of the world have disgraced and crushed and expelled and destroyed; persecuted, burned and drowned, and who, despite their anger and their fury, continues to live and to flourish. What is this Jew whom they have never succeeded in enticing with all the enticements in the world, whose oppressors and persecutors only suggested that he deny (and disown) his religion and cast aside the faithfulness of his ancestors?!
"The Jew — is the symbol of eternity. ... He is the one who for so long had guarded the prophetic message and transmitted it to all mankind. A people such as this can never disappear. The Jew is eternal. He is the embodiment of eternity.- Leo Tolstoy, in "What is the Jew?" (1908)
- May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.
- George Washington, Letter to the Hebrew congregation of Newport, Rhode Island (1790)
- [in response to being called a "self-loathing Jew"] Well I do hate myself, but it has nothing to do with being Jewish.
[edit] Disputed
- The day will come when all nations amidst which the Jews are dwelling will have to raise the question of their wholesale expulsion, a question which will be one of life or death, good health or chronic disease, peaceful existence or perpetual social fever.
- Franz Liszt, as quoted in the second edition of The Gypsy in Music. Some dispute as to the authenticity of this quote exists, as this work was edited posthumously by his Catholic mistress and patron, Carolyn Sayn-Wittgenstein, whose anti-semitism was well-known. Liszt was known to have donated to Jewish charitable organisations in various countries and to support the works by such prominent Jewish artists as Giacomo Meyerbeer, Felix Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine and Charles Alkan — often in the face of anti-semitic criticism. Regarding Liszt as an anti-semite has been a popular misbelief for a long time — probably springing from his association with well-known anti-semites such as Richard Wagner, Hans von Bülow and Carolyn Sayn-Wittgenstein. For further information read Liszt: v. 3. The final years, 1861-1886 (1996) by Alan Walker|.
[edit] Misattributed
- They (the Jews) work more effectively against us, than the enemy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in... It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pest to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America.
- Sometimes rendered : The Jews work more effectively against us than the enemy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in... It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pest to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America.
- Both of these are doctored statements that have been widely disseminated as genuine on many anti-semitic websites; They are distortions derived from a statement that may be authentic, and was attributed to George Washington in Maxims of George Washington (1894) about currency speculators during the Revolutionary war, not about Jews: "This tribe of black gentry work more effectually against us, than the enemy's arms. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties, and the great cause we are engaged in. It is much to be lamented that each State, long ere this, has not hunted them down as pests to society, and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America." More information is available at Snopes. com: "To Bigotry, No Sanction"
