28 quotes
The greatest leaders the world has known were never charismatic or dependent on their public's falling in love with them.
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
There is nothing to do but to fix and fix and repair and repair all the time, every day, all our lives.
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
Statistics are often the last refuge of the antihumanist.
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
An extreme always appears more pure than a compromise.
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
The strength to carve signs in stones is for me the Levant, and is what makes it all worthwhile.
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
Any given discipline contains a majority of priests and a minority of prophets, and the eternal question is who prevails.
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
Generally, we translate only one level of a language, the top of the pyramid, leaving very different levels concealed below.
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
That is precisely what agreements are for: so that hatred won't become war.
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
The first things that get lost in charismatic leadership are facts.
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
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.
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
We know more about a foreign politician or entertainer than we do about the man across the road.
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
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.
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
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.
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
Let us recall the precise role myth plays in society: it inhibits change. Perhaps that is its raison d'être.
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
We are living in an age of peacemaking. Not peace through love. Peace through accord.
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
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")
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
there is nothing in the world as morally binding as belonging to a minority.
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
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")
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
Today, we can discern from the vocabulary the underlying ideology of a text or a speech. No self-respecting liberal would freely use the terms "enemy," or "annihilate," or "avenge," which no fundamentalist can do without.
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)
The so-called Arab-Israeli conflict-that is, the problem of the territories and their population-is one of the last remaining conflicts, and one of the most superfluous. It can be resolved. Not by love: by accord.
The Vocabulary of Peace: Life, Culture, and Politics in the Middle East (1995)