Milton Steinberg Quotes

Jewish nationalism means no more than recognition of the peoplehood of Israel, and of the propriety of that people's being a religio-cultural group in America, a nationality in Eastern Europe, and in Palestine an actualized nation.

One wears one's mind out in study, and yet has more mind with which to study. One gives away one's heart in love and yet has more heart to give away. One perishes out of pity for a suffering world, and is stronger therefore. So, too, it is possible at one and the same time to hold on to life and let go.

Anti-Zionists, last of all, exhibit a distaste for certain words. It was Thomas Hobbes who, anticipating semantics, pointed out that words are counters, not coins; that the wise man looks through them to reality. This counsel many anti-Zionists seem to have neglected. They are especially disturbed by the two nouns nationalism and commonwealth, and by the adjective political. And yet these terms on examination are not at all upsetting.

The believer in God has to account for the existence of unjust suffering; the atheist has to account for everything else.