126 Quotes by Herman Wouk

The Talmud is to this day the circulating heart’s blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs or ceremonies we observe-whether we are orthodox, conservative, reform or merely spasmodic sentimentalists-we follow the Talmud. It is our common Law.

Religious people tend to encounter, among those who are not, a cemented certainty that belief in God is a crutch for the weak and fearful. It would be just as silly to assert that disbelief in God is a crutch for the immoral and the ill-read.

What matters is living with dignity, with decency, and without fear, in the way that best honors one’s intelligence and one’s birth. Part 2 THE FAITH.

Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war, but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act, but the coming of a state of mind.

War is a business in which a lot of people watch a few people get killed and are damn glad it wasn’t them.

Tocqueville long ago marked as the great weakness of a democracy in his unforgettable phrase, “the tyranny of the majority.” The pressure to emulate neighbors, the urge to conform to popular views and manners, the deep fear of being different.

Extremism, he says, is the universal tuberculosis of modern society: a world infection of resentment and hatred generated by rapid change and the breakdown of old values. In the stabler nations the tubercles are sealed off in scar tissue, and these are the harmless lunatic movements. In times of social disorder, depression, war, or revolution, the germs can break forth and infect the nation. This has happened in Germany. It could happen anywhere, even in the United States.

Remember this, if you can – there is nothing, nothing more precious than time. You probably feel you have a measureless supply of it, but you haven’t. Wasted hours destroy your life just as surely at the beginning as at the end – only at the end it becomes more obvious. Use your time while you have it, Willie, in making something of yourself.

The UN is all screams and twitters, like a ladies’ room when a guy barges in. A.