“The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the desire for personal independence — these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it.”

“The man grows up at the same time as this mission!”

“What matters is not the facts but how you discover and think about them.”

“To me, God is like this happy bus driver.”

“To be noble, help others to succeed.”

“إن القرآن لم يذر وسيلة موصلة إلى إنعاش العقل وتحرير الفكر إلا وتذرع بها، فهو إذا تحاكم فإلى العقل، وإذا حاج فبحكم العقل، وإذا سخط فعلى معطلي العقل، وإذا رضي فعن أولي العقل”

“If you hold a candle close to you, its flame rises. And if you hold it away from you, its flame shrinks. The same way you hold a candle close to you, keep all your plans, aspirations, projects, and dreams close to you too. Do not share your plans or goals until you complete them, because as you hold your candle away from you — envy, jealousy, and resentment may put out your flame before it grows.”

“NexusI wrote stubbornly into the evening.At the window, a giant praying mantisrubbed his monkey wrench head against the glass,begging vacantly with pale eyes;and the commas leapt at me like wormsor miniature scythes blackened with age.the praying mantis screeched louder,his ragged jaws opening into formlessness.I walked outside;the grass hissed at my heels.Up ahead in the lapping darknesshe wobbled, magnified and absurdly green,a brontosaurus, a poet.”

“The past is made out of facts… I guess the future is just hope.”

“Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! ‘Have courage to use your own reason!’- that is the motto of enlightenment.”

“Truth is a risky proposition. It’s the nature of mediocre human beings to believe that lies are necessary, that they serve a purpose, that truth is subversive, that candor is dangerous, that the very scaffold of communal life is supported by lies.”

“You will not do incredible things without an incredible dream.”

“Life seems sometimes like nothing more than a series of losses, from beginning to end. That’s the given. How you respond to those losses, what you make of what’s left, that’s the part you have to make up as you go.”