Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes
The Torah is the foundational text for Jewish law, but the Haggadah is our book of living memory. We are not merely telling a story here. We are being called to a radical act of empathy. Here we are, embarking on an ancient, perennial attempt to give human lives - our lives - dignity.
Quotes to Explore
-
'Empathy' is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn't pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash.
-
Together with international unity and resolve we can meet the challenge of this global scourge and work to bring about an international law of zero tolerance for terrorism.
-
Delaware is the only state east of the Rockies that is allowed under federal law to offer sports betting.
-
A ruler makes use of the majority and neglects the minority, and so he does not devote himself to virtue but to law.
-
When people read a novel 600 pages long, six months pass, and all they will remember are five pages. They don't remember the text - instead, they remember the sensations the text gives them.
-
What Alexander Graham Bell thought up occupied less space than a flower vase. Now it's so small that I have to search all my pockets to discover I've received a spam text.
-
I enjoy it too much - even if I knew I'd never get a book published, I would still write. I enjoy the experience of getting thoughts and ideas and plots and characters organised into this narrative framework.
-
I like to believe, as a writer, that anybody who isn't a reader yet has just not found the right book.
-
I bought the rights to this book, 'The Ploughmen,' by a Montana writer named Kim Zupan, and I've written the screenplay, and I really feel pretty strong about it. It's really hauntingly beautiful. It's got some suspense and great drama, but it's a real character thing.
-
Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.
-
When a city says, 'If you're illegal, come here, we're not going to prosecute you,' the federal law should supersede the local mayor's edict.
-
I don't really know what the Great American Novel is. I like the idea that there could be one now, and I wouldn't object if someone thought it was mine, but I don't claim to have written that - I just wrote my book.
-
The rigid cause themselves to be broken; the pliable cause themselves to be bound.
-
I've always been singing all my life, but I started playing guitar when I was 19, and that was my final year in university, in law school. I think that happened when I started making a lot of friends who were in the independent music scene.
-
One with the law is a majority.
-
I try to do that in this book without preaching - to try to do as you just said that you really have to defend the First Amendment rights of everybody.
-
Our show is different, because it's not about law and order, it's about psychology, the intent of somebody.
-
There was no equal pay law when I started working. I was no different to any other woman in any other job at the time.
-
The first step in the direction of a world rule of law is the recognition that peace no longer is an unobtainable ideal but a necessary condition of continued human existence. But to take even this step we must return to a calm and responsible frame of mind in which we can face the long patient tasks ahead.
-
When I work on a book, I usually start with a question. And I don't sit around and go 'I need to write a book. What's a good question?' It will be a question that's just clanging around in my head. So for 'What It Is,' it was this idea of 'What is an image?'
-
A judge who likes every outcome he reaches is very likely a bad judge... stretching for results he prefers rather than those the law demands.
-
I don't really recognise success. I don't see myself as on an upwardly mobile trajectory. I see myself as on the edge of a cliff about to fall off.
-
The Torah is the foundational text for Jewish law, but the Haggadah is our book of living memory. We are not merely telling a story here. We are being called to a radical act of empathy. Here we are, embarking on an ancient, perennial attempt to give human lives - our lives - dignity.
