The Jewish Wisdom Database

One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.

In Jewish history there are no coincidences.

Our Holy Scriptures are not only a religious book, but the foundation of our literature, our language and our history, and the sole source of them.

We have guarded the Book for thousands of years and it has guarded us.

Just as the nation creates its own history, so, too, is it created by it.

All ancient people praised the Golden Era of the past. Only the Jews tell wonders of the golden Era still to come.

History, far from repeating itself, occasionally produces startling surprises.

Our task today is harder than Moses'; he had only to deliver Israel from one Egypt, we must deliver it from many.

One kingdom comes and another goes, but Israel abices for ever.

The Jewish people is old in one way yet a babe in another.

No city in the world, not even Athens and Rome, ever played as great a role in the life of a nation for so long a time, as Jerusalem has done in the life of the Jewish people.

Judaism is an historical religion.

If you see a generation drowning in a sea of troubles, go forth and consider what the judges of Israel do!

By justice a king makes the kingdom firm and strong.

The legends of a nation reveal its character to us more clearly than its acts and accidents.

No nation can be redeemed save by itself.

Preservation of the special character of nations is essential for progress.

The future of a nation is in its past.

Of all the evils of our generation, I do not know one that obstructs the moral development of mankind more than the Press.

Our ancestors in the desert remembered the fine fish they used to eat in Egypt, but the hard labor they were made to do there they forgot.

Draw from the past, live in the present, work for the future!

I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

The inner history of a people is contained in its songs.

I have pitched my tent on these ancient hills and my desire is to tie together the ends of the thread that history broke.