Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Shulamith Hareven

129 quotes

“The boundaries which will determine our future are not geographic...The true boundary is, rather, the knowledge that there is a limit to power. The respect which we need will not come through conquest by the sword: it can be obtained only through respect for others. Our ultimate hope is not for the undivided land of Israel, but for an Israel which is undivided in spirit and at peace with itself.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in article (1991)
“The peace must not be seen as a peace of industrialists and yuppies; it must not be seen as a peace between people in suits who have Philippine maids, on the backs of, and over the heads of those who are referred to too clinically as the “lower tenth percentiles”—in simple Hebrew, the have-nots.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the Jerusalem Bus at 7 AM: 'Where is our peace?'" (1996) translated from the Hebrew by Naomi Danis in Lilith
“The sounds of a small city. As small as a man's palm. (chapter 2 p22)”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Her laugh is like slivers of sunlight. (about Hulda, chapter 3 p40)”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The first child forces you to define yourself," he said. "When the second comes, you're already defined. Not just as a parent. Whatever you are and aren't, you can be sure that's what your child will learn to demand from you. I was very critical of my own father from an early age. (Elias, chapter 5 p111)”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An ocean of music foams through him in great waves and keeps on going. (about Tony Crowther, chapter 6 p130)”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One has to love, Sara, she says softly, one has to love, human beings are so pitiful, we can't prevent a single death, all we can do is stave it off a little. Give comfort. "That's what Dr. Bimbi says too, but he sees that staving off as a sign of human strength." "Oh, no," Thérèse recoils. "Human beings have no strength. We live like flowers, by the grace of God." (chapter 7 p146)”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Elias no longer hesitates. More and more he throws himself into their affairs. All the energy that had been dammed up in him while he had struggled to make up his mind now bursts loose. Even his movements have changed: his stride is taller now, quicker, firmer. No longer does he amble lazily along on tall legs. His long mouth is not the brown wound it used to be, having lost much of its sadness. Like that of any new convert, his zeal outdoes itself. (chapter 9 178)”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She no longer sought fortune-tellers, but relied on herself, on her own two arms, as if she had only now discovered their true strength to support. To sustain. (chapter 9 p180)”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ways of the world began to turn upside down about one hour after sunrise. (first line of "Prophet")”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They kept leaving all the time. One from a town, two from a family, they fled the settled districts of the land of Egypt to join those who had left before them. They did not go far: no further than the nearest oasis or the first gully that had a spring. They sought only to put the sand between themselves and Egypt, to get away from its lords and officials. No more than that. (first lines)”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An immense freedom, vast beyond human measure, hung over everything. The days had no rules and the laws of nature themselves seemed suspended. There was no longer any need to rise for work in the morning. There were no masters and no slaves. There was only the desert, which held no threat, and the gullies among the rocks. And the fresh, boundless mornings with the thinnest of mists rising from the thorn trees and from the flowering star thistles in the plain. The silence was palpable. There was no end of sky. (p 16)”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And yet, thought many of the camp dwellers without saying it, and yet we should have had a god to show them. So as not to be shamed. (p 32)”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In a small stone hut, not far from the Valley of Zin, lived a young man whose father had sought to kill him. Ever since then his eyes blinked rapidly, as if fending off a strong light. The villagers kept away from him and he from them, their speech brief and halting, no more room in it for good or evil than the space between a cloud and a lone thorn tree in the desert. (first lines)”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes it rained a little. Sometimes they went thirsty. They knew that God was far away. Perhaps he was in the mountains, the place of the priests and the tabernacle. (p 133)”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Hittite woman would not give up. Each time Salu came, she clutched desperately at the threads of his life as if at a garment she could pull him by. (p 171)”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nationalism reinforced by fundamentalist religion equals conflict. In this region, we are drugged on man-made drama; on a perpetual high of violent politics. It will take more than a few men signing a paper to make people realize the strength of the ordinary; to feel that sanity can be exciting. Only visible, everyday change can, gradually, with great patience, make it happen. (Preface)”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One essential thing did change: from now on it is not automatically Jew against Arab and Arab against Jew; it is the Jews and Arabs who support peace, and those, Jews and Arabs both, who oppose it-not one nation against another, but two bi-national coalitions. That in itself constitutes the greatest change in the Middle East, perhaps the only one that might succeed, indeed, perhaps a last chance. (Preface)”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To my mind, the whole world is nothing more than an invitation to take part in creation. Literature, at least-or at least the magic of opening sentences-answers this need. ("Beginnings")”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Food is a world view. It is the real relationship between man and his environment; it is enjoying all this bounty, or forcing and being forced. ("On Being a Levantine")”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am a Levantine because I see war as the total failure of common sense, an execrable last resort. And because I am a Levantine, all fundamentalists on all sides, from Khomeini to Kahane, will always want to destroy me and all Levantines like me, here and in the neighboring”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The strength to carve signs in stones is for me the Levant, and is what makes it all worthwhile.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“reference to a Georgis Seferis poem, in the essay "On Being a Levantine”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We write of what we know, but a large part of our local culture-not all but a large part-tends to lose its significance in transposition.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is probable that the time of governments' wishing to control literature is past. What we are faced with now is the frightening authority of great, terrifying masses of people who hardly ever read, who prefer television and the movies, and who carry the terrible weight of sheer huge numbers. What can we do? Essentially, what we have been doing so far: write of what we know, our places, our environment, our families. Tribal literature, if you wish. All the world understands families. A family contributes to the understanding of people as people.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To a certain extent, all writing is working within tradition: we use idioms, linguistic connections, and associations known to our tribe, because we cannot go outside language, and languages are tribal affairs.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Writing, real writing, has very little to do with so-called typical behavior. It must be whittled down from our familiar spheres of reference to what the person actually is and does; in good writing, no person is "typical.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To this day our language has kept its stony, concentrated, concise character, striving for the essential. This makes Hebrew practically untranslatable; a phrase of three words in Hebrew becomes a phrase of eighteen words in French, so you can imagine what it does to poetry.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our history is not only the history of a people, but also the history of a language...Some parts of our tradition are widely known; others are less known because it is so difficult to translate from Hebrew. Whole theories were built upon incorrect translations from Hebrew. The commandment "Thou shalt not kill," as most translations have it, does not exist in the Bible. The original commandment is "Thou shalt not murder," which is entirely different. A whole ethos has been created in other cultures because of a fallacious translation of a commandment written originally in Hebrew.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If people visit books as they do tourist sites, looking for the famous passages they have heard about, looking for the best-seller they were told about, just to be able to say "I was there," then we have missed the whole point of literature.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Generally, we translate only one level of a language, the top of the pyramid, leaving very different levels concealed below.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hebrew, a synchronic language, holds certain precise ethical and philosophical value concepts that belong only to Hebrew and to Judaism and that are really untranslatable.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is probably true that the generation born in Palestine sixty years ago was the first since the Dispersion whose parents spoke Hebrew as an everyday language. Also, for the first time in two millennia, there was no longer a division between the mother tongue spoken at home and the male language of study and ritual. This is no minor matter, for from a psychological point of view, Hebrew at that point stopped being only a language of learning and ideas and became a language of feeling.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We know more about a foreign politician or entertainer than we do about the man across the road.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At some point we will have to decide whether Hebrew in the next thirty or three hundred years will serve merely as a channel of immediate and basic communication, as a language at the top of a pyramid, without any pyramid beneath it, a claustrophobic language not much different from Esperanto, or whether it will embody an entire non-Western culture that we know is worth preserving. Since language shapes us more than we shape it, this decision will be essentially about our own identity. It seems more and more certain that this will be a matter of a conscious decision.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“if the limits of my language are indeed the limits of my world, I cannot think of a world more open to exploration and discovery, more intriguing and satisfying, than Hebrew.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The word "teacher" does not mean a person who "presents" a lesson (what an awful expression!), who is responsible for the pupils' being able to quote a few details and dates. A teacher-if he or she is also an educator-is responsible for seeing that most of the pupils in his or her class leave school as autonomous individuals, capable of independent thinking and decisive and discriminating behavior. For a person to be able to make autonomous decisions (read: to be a proper citizen), he needs to have as much information as possible. Not myths. Not legends. Not lies. Information.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“there is nothing in the world as morally binding as belonging to a minority.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In most universities neither law nor mathematics is taught among the humanities. This is a pity, because it would benefit the so-called human spirit to move a little horizontally, not just perpendicularly, so that people could learn a few intellectual languages in addition to those they know.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a familiar sight: an intellectual so sure of his thesis or model that he pesters the powers that be to put it into practice. Accountability, however, will always fall on the person who acted on the theory, not the person who invented it. We confer upon the intellectual-by definition-the full and complete freedom to create a theory and to build an abstract model without any responsibility for the results, and this is indeed one of the most difficult problems to be pondered on in the humanities.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any given discipline contains a majority of priests and a minority of prophets, and the eternal question is who prevails.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Intellectuals usually analyze change, sometimes they are lucky enough to foretell it, and occasionally they are instrumental in causing change. In the usual situation the intellectual becomes a kind of ornament to a revolution, if it likes to pride itself on its intellectuals.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The greatest danger to any discipline is the creation of a static model that keeps the same vocabulary for any length of time. In such a case, the intellectual becomes an ex-intellectual in no time.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A group of intellectuals can unwittingly become an arrogant anti-intellectual group if it does not give a good shake once in a while to itself and its vocabulary, from the bottom up. It can become anti-intellectual if it is no longer able to live with ambiguity and cannot bring itself to say "I have no answer," "We do not know.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The more one shares knowledge, the more of it one has, and the more complete it becomes. Moreover, it is the sharing of knowledge that brings about greater knowledge and inspires more and better thought. Knowledge is not subject to purely commercial considerations, just as good books are not subject to the prevalent economy.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the Sinai of knowledge there is room for all of us, friends and enemies, opponents and admirers, all of us who populate the earth, without limitation at all, in a different ecology yet unknown to us in most other fields. Perhaps, very slowly, we shall come to know it.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we insist on absolute justice, the reckoning of lives will never end. All we can talk about is beneficial justice, beneficial for both sides-that is, a territorial compromise and the continuation of the conflict at the negotiating table.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Day by day, hour by hour we create Hebrew, Israeli culture, and we take it for granted-not because we wonder whether or not it is "justified," but because this is our existential circumstance. Every day children are born here whose right it is to live, and in peace. Is not all this reality?”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is nothing to do but to fix and fix and repair and repair all the time, every day, all our lives.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Under no circumstances are we to forget our tragedies. But whoever bases our identity on them and them alone, distorts the greatness of this people and keeps from its sons not only pride, but sanity itself.”
Shulamith Hareven (1930–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source