Isaac Bashevis Singer Quotes

Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.

For those who are willing to make an effort, great miracles and wonderful treasures are in store.

What do they know-all these scholars, all these philosophers, all the leaders of the world - about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented, exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka.

Two important things are to have a genuine interest in people and to be kind to them. Kindness, I've discovered, is everything.

A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise... Because this is how life is full of surprises.

People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.

In their behavior toward creatures, all men are Nazis. Human beings see oppression vividly when they're the victims. Otherwise they victimize blindly and without a thought.

As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right.

As long as people will shed the blood of innocent creatures there can be no peace, no liberty, no harmony between people. Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.

We must believe in free will - we have no choice.

Life is God's novel. Let him write it.

There will never be any peace in the world as long as we eat animals.

I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.

There are 500 reasons I write for children.... Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics.... They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.... They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions.

Night is a time of rigor, but also of mercy. There are truths which one can see only when it’s dark

We all play chess with Fate as partner. He makes a move, we make a move. He tries to checkmate us in three moves, we try to prevent it. We know we can't win, but we're driven to give him a good fight.

Whenever I'm in trouble, I pray. And because I'm in trouble all of the time, I pray almost constantly.

But if we have people who have the power to tell a story, there will always be readers.

Even in the worm that crawls in the earth there glows a divine spark. When you slaughter a creature, you slaughter God.

Sometimes love is stronger than a man's convictions.

Man prays for mercy, but is unwilling to extend it to others. Why then should man expect mercy from God? It is unfair to expect something that you are not willing to give.

When you betray somebody else, you also betray yourself.

Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.

If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.

The Jewish people have been in exile for 2,000 years; they have lived in hundreds of countries, spoken hundreds of languages and still they kept their old language, Hebrew. They kept their Aramaic, later their Yiddish; they kept their books; they kept their faith.

What nature delivers to us is never stale. Because what nature creates has eternity in it.

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper.

When a human being kills an animal for food, he is neglecting his own hunger for justice.

There is a permanent amnesia planted in us, which just as we keep forgetting our dreams, we sometimes keep on forgetting our reality.

We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions.

There will be no justice as long as man will stand with a knife or with a gun and destroy those who are weaker than he is.

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

Kindness, I've discovered, is everything in life.

Slaughter and justice cannot dwell together.

The more you see what other people do, the more you learn about yourself.

What a strange power there is in clothing.

The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual - when it begins to ignore the passions, the emotions - it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.

As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behavior toward creatures, all men were Nazis.

Men want all women to lie down as whores and get up as virgins.

The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique.

Literature is the memory of humanity.

Man is a disgusting thing. If you beat him he starts to scream, but if it is the other one who is beaten, then he constructs a theory.

I don't invent characters because the Almightly has already invented millions... Just like experts at fingerprints do not create fingerprints but learn how to read them.

There is great treasure there behind our skull and this is true about all of us. This little treasure has great, great powers, and I would say we only have learnt a very, very small part of what it can do.

Originality is not seen in single words or even in sentences. Originality is the sum total of a man's thinking or his writing.

In relation to them (animals), all people are Nazis for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka.

All that God does is for the good.

In the history of old Jewish literature there was never any basic difference between the poet and the prophet. Our ancient poetry often became law and a way of life.

It is a general rule that when the grain of truth cannot be found, men will swallow great helpings of falsehood.

To be a vegetarian is to disagree - to disagree with the course of things today... starvation, cruelty - we must make a statement against these things. Vegetarianism is my statement. And I think it's a strong one.