Quotes from Avishai Margalit

Some say that this is the Israelis' original sin. With this I do not agree but I think we can call it Israel's immaculate misconception.

Ideals may tell us something important about what we would like to be. But compromises tell us who we are.

The horror of falling into utter oblivion is not necessarily the fear of what will happen to us after death but of what it says about our relationships now. It is the fear of not amounting to much in our present relations with others.

Communities must make decisions and establish institutions that foster forgetting as much as remembering. Shredding the personal files of old Stasi (the former Fast Germany secret services) is an example of a communal decision to forget.