“We are used to thinking of the Arabs as primitive men of the desert, as a donkey-like nation that neither sees nor understands what is going around it. But this is a GREAT ERROR.”

[But if things continue the way they are] …the society that I envision, if my dream is not just a false notion, this society will have to begin to create itself in the midst of fuss, noisiness and panic, and will have to face the prospects of both internal and external war.

This Moses, I say, this man of old time, whose existence and character you are trying to elucidate, matters to nobody but scholars like you.

We can’t ignore the fact that ahead of us is a great war and this war is going to need significant preparation.

If this be the Messiah, then I do not wish to see his coming

The right place for the League of Nations is not Geneva or the Hague, Ascher Ginsberg has dreamed of a Temple on Mount Zion where the representatives of all nations should dedicate a Temple of Eternal Peace.

The less their ability, the more their conceit.

Historical truth is that, and that alone, which reveals the forces that go to mould the social life of mankind.

Only when all peoples of the earth shall go to THIS temple as pilgrims is eternal peace to become a fact.

The Arab, like all sons of Sham, has sharp and crafty mind . . . Should time come when life of our people in Palestine imposes to a smaller or greater extent on the natives, they WILL NOT easily step aside.

More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.

What is national freedom if not a people’s inner freedom to cultivate its abilities along the beaten path of its history?

More than Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel.

Faith, I am no such fool; everyone for himself in this desert of selfishness which is called life.

As our Father makes many a flower to bloom unseen in the lonely desert, [let us] do all that we can do, as under God’s eye, though no other eye ever take note of it.

The deity who stalked the deserts of the Middle East millennia ago-and who seems to have abandoned them to bloodshed in his name ever since-is no one to consult on questions of ethics.

A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.

Not everyone knows what to do when they come across a snowflake in the desert.

The deserts of the Middle East are in need of water, not bombers.

We must go out into a desert of some kind (your backyard will do) and come into a personal experience of the awesome love of God.

There were two saints in the desert, who had sewed thorns into all their clothes; and we seek for nothing but comfort!