Quotes from Jonathan Sacks

When religious faith goes, five things happen, gradually and imperceptibly. First there is a loss of belief in human dignity and the sanctity of life.

Faith in Judaism is not about ontology (what exists?) or epistemology (what can we know?) but about relationships – about the people with whom we converse.

That is why they are called a "warped and twisted generation," because good and evil were so interwoven in their conduct, and "it is difficult to separate good and evil when evil is done in a holy cause.

God's greatness is that He hears the unheard.

Communes are good examples of co-operation without kinship. Sosis found that 6 per cent of secular communes were still in existence twenty years after their founding, as compared with 39 per cent of religious ones. In a follow-up study he found the more demanding the religious group, the longer its lifespan.2 Religion creates and sustains communities.

The text is candid about the dangers. In the heat of the moment, R. Yo?anan and Resh Lakish both say things they subsequently regret, with devastating consequences. But R. Yo?anan remains insistent that the search for truth can be no less important than the truth itself, that scholarship thrives on challenge, and that, as the sages put it, "rivalry between scribes increases wisdom

Understanding – religious understanding – comes from the willingness to be challenged.

The evidence shows that religious people - defined by regular attendance at a place of worship - actually do make better neighbors.

Europe is dying. That is one of the unsayable truths of our time. We are undergoing the moral equivalent of climate change and no one is talking about it.

Freedom... leads those who have more than they need to share with those who have less

In an ecology of love, people can relate in trust and face the future without fear. They do not need to play it safe. They can take uncertainty in their stride.

Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holy of holies of Jewish time. It is that rarest of phenomena, a Jewish festival without food. Instead it is a day of fasting and prayer, introspection and self-judgment when, collectively and repeatedly, we confess our sins and pray to be written into God's Book of Life.

Close to a billion people - one-eighth of the world's population - still live in hunger. Each year 2 million children die through malnutrition. This is happening at a time when doctors in Britain are warning of the spread of obesity. We are eating too much while others starve.

People are feeling and sensing a return of anti-Semitism - even in Europe, which, seventy years after the Holocaust, is a very scary thing. I think they are feeling that Israel is very isolated and doesn't always get what they see as fair treatment in the European media.

Some years ago there was a study to discover the most stressful occupation. It turned out not to be the head of a large business, football manager or prime minister, but rather: bus driver.

We do not always appreciate the role the Queen has played in one of the most significant changes in the past 60 years: the transformation of Britain into a multi-ethnic, multi-faith society. No one does interfaith better than the Royal family, and it starts with the Queen herself.

What I find fascinating about Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of lights we celebrate at this time of the year, is the way its story was transformed by time.

The people of Israel are entitled, as is any other nation, to live in peace and safety.

There's always hope. You can lose everything else in the world, but Jews never lose hope.

Frequent worshippers are also significantly more active citizens. They are more likely to belong to community organizations, especially those concerned with young people, health, arts and leisure, neighborhood and civic groups and professional associations.

Jews know this in their bones. Our community could not exist for a day without its volunteers. They are the lifeblood of our organizations, whether they involve welfare, youth, education, care of the sick and elderly, or even protection against violence and abuse.

Part of the beauty of Judaism, and surely this is so for other faiths also, is that it gently restores control over time. Three times a day we stop what we are doing and turn to God in prayer. We recover perspective. We inhale a deep breath of eternity.

Britain, relative to the U.S., is a highly secular society. Philanthropy alone cannot fill the gap left by government cutbacks. And the sources of altruism go deep into our evolutionary past.