“Over the past few years, the road to confrontation has shown its consequences: loss of innocent lives, destruction and fear. Most costly, however, was the loss of hope.”

We have to always hope in humanity that people will make the right choices.

The monarchy that I hand over to my son is not going to be the same one that I have inherited. … There is a tendency by a lot of officials to hide behind the king.

When there’s a status quo, usually what shakes everybody up is some sort of military confrontation, at which point we all come running and screaming to pick up the pieces.

Political development should start at the grassroots.

You’re always going to have terrorism.

Wikileaks didn’t help confidence with American administrations because of conversations made public so easily.

When we try to push the envelope, there are certain sectors of society that say this is a Zionist plot to sort of destabilize our country, or this is an American agenda.

When you get billions in aid and your weapons resupplied and your ammunition stock resupplied, you don’t learn the lesson that war is bad and nobody wins.

I believe strongly in the rights of women… my mother is a woman, my sister is a woman, my daughter is a woman, my wife is a woman.

Extremists, who thrive on conflict; who do not tolerate diversity; who seek power through division and destruction.

I think the success of democracy is not really police security; it’s the presence of a broad middle class.

Mr. President, prime ministers, let us have ambitions: ambitions to move beyond the violence and occupation, to the day when two states, Palestine and Israel, can live together side by side in peace and security.

Is Israel going to continue to be ‘Fortress Israel’? Or, as we all hope, become accepted into the neighborhood, which I believe is the only way we can move forward in harmony.

It is always dangerous to underestimate anybody.

We’re never going to be able to get rid of terrorism, because there is always going to be evil in the world.

Our response has been, “Well, let’s then make an effort to get the Israelis and the Palestinians to sit around the table.” That hasn’t happened. So we only have ourselves to blame for this crisis.

Worry does not mean fear, but readiness for the confrontation.

The greatest reward of this constant interrogation, confrontation with the brutality of my country, is that it has freed me from hosts and myths.

Regimented minds cannot grasp the concept of confrontation as an open exchange of major differences with a view to settlement through genuine dialogue.

This was due to a kind of increased existential awareness that resulted from this confrontation with the death of another. And I think it brought them in touch with their own death, so they began to experience a kind of preciousness to life that comes with an experience of its transiency.

Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.

It is our honest response to the grandeur and mystery of reality our confrontation with that which transcends the given.

Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions. Source: The Wisdom of Heschel

When there’s a status quo, usually what shakes everybody up is some sort of military confrontation, at which point we all come running and screaming to pick up the pieces.