For in my tradition, as a Jew, I believe that whatever we receive we must share.

I've been fighting my entire adult life for men and women everywhere to be equal and to be different. But there is one right I would not grant anyone. And that is the right to be indifferent.

Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.

Only one enemy is worse than despair: indifference. In every area of human creativity, indifference is the enemy; indifference of evil is worse than evil, because it is also sterile.

Every nation has its prestigious military academies - or so few of them - that reach not only the virtues of peace but also the art of attaining it? I mean attaining and protecting it by means other than weapons, the tools of war. Why are we surprised whenever war recedes and yields to peace?

I have a tremendous respect for Professor [Frank Moore] Cross.

My ambition really was, even as a child, to be a writer, a commentator, and a teacher, but a teacher of Talmud.