No human being is illegal. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?

What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stifled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedome depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs.

What [Franz] Kafka says about the Tower of Babel: In the beginning there were actually many languages, and then as a punishment God gave the world a single language. And then they stopped understanding each other.

I don't know the real answer, my answer to anything which is essentially human relations is education. Whatever the answer is, education must be its measured component and if you try to educate with generosity not with triumphalism I think sometimes it works, especially young people, that's why I teach, I've been teaching all my life.

The primary task of a Jew in turbulent times is to be Jewish.

Only fanatics — in religion as well as in politics — can find a meaning in someone else’s death.

The story [of the Sacrifice of Isaac ] is much more a part of theology than of history.