Religiosity turns out to be the best indicator of civic involvement: it's more accurate than education, age, income, gender or race.

We have lots of heroes today - sportsmen, supermodels, media personalities. They come, they have their 15 minutes of fame, and they go. But the influence of good teachers stays with us. They are the people who really shape our lives.

God has given us many faiths but only one world in which to co-exist. May your work help all of us to cherish our commonalities and feel enlarged by our differences.

Civil society rests on moral relationships. They are covenantal rather than contractual. They are brought about not by governments but by us a husbands and wives, parents, friends and citizens, and by the knowledge of what we do and what we are makes a difference to those around us. (...) Renewing society's resources of moral energy is the program, urgent but achievable.

Freedom begins with what we teach our children. That is why Jews became a people whose passion is education, whose heroes are teachers and whose citadels are schools.

Find people not to envy but to admire. Do not the profitable but the admirable deed. Live by ideals.

I believe faith is not certainty but the courage to live with uncertainty.