“And I also learned that if we did not devote ourselves to developing effective world law, the same cruel mentality that made the Holocaust possible might one day destroy the entire human race.”

I don’t say they’re naive, I say they’re stupid. Stupid to an incredible degree to send young people out to kill other young people they don’t even know, who never did anybody any harm, never harmed them. That is the current system. I am naive? That’s insane.

People get discouraged. They should remember, from me, it takes courage not to be discouraged.

Look what’s happened to the same-sex marriages. To tell somebody a man can become a woman, a woman can become a man, and a man can marry a man, they would have said,

I prefer law to war under all circumstances.

What has happened here [aftermath of 9/11] is not war in its traditional sense. This is clearly a crime against humanity.

If it’s naive to want peace instead of war, let ’em make sure they say I’m naive. Because I want peace instead of war.

“You’re crazy.” But it’s a reality today. So the world is changing. And you shouldn’t – you know – be despairing because it’s never happened before. Nothing new ever happened before.

Well, if it’s naive to want peace instead of war, let ’em make sure they say I’m naive. Because I want peace instead of war. If they tell me they want war instead of peace.

Nuremberg taught me that creating a world of tolerance and compassion would be a long and arduous task.

War makes murderers out of otherwise decent people. All wars, and all decent people.

I don’t think I’m an idealist. I’m a realist. And I see the progress. The progress has been remarkable. Look at the emancipation of woman in my lifetime. You’re sitting here as a female.

The Holocaust is – there’s nothing comparable to it.

Larry David finds a way to make jokes about the Holocaust. It would never have occurred to me. And it was funny.

An accidental military launch of multiple warheads could result in a worldwide nuclear holocaust.

[talking about the Holocaust] ‘But to put something in context is a step towards saying it can be understood and that it can be explained.

And one of the historian’s jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be… even on the Holocaust.

The Holocaust is a central event in many people’s lives, but it also has become a metaphor for our century. There cannot be an end to speaking and writing about it. Besides, in Israel, everyone carries a biography deep inside him.

There is no answer to Auschwitz…To try to answer is to commit a supreme blasphemy. Israel enables us to bear the agony of Auschwitz without radical despair

With the number of survivors and witnesses diminishing by the day, and the reality that the Holocaust is fading into the pages of history and memory, we should not have to wait any longer.