Harold Kushner Quotes

29 Sourced Quotes

One of the most sublime experiences we can ever have is to wake up feeling healthy after we have been sick.

Harold Kushner

Good people will do good things, lots of them, because they are good people. They will do bad things because they are human.

Harold Kushner

God is the One who is with us when we have to do something we don't think we are capable of doing.

Harold Kushner

Fun can be the dessert of our lives but never its main course.

Harold Kushner

The God I believe in is not so fragile that you hurt Him by being angry at him, or so petty that He will hold it against you for being upset with Him.

Harold Kushner

Only a life of goodness and honesty leaves us feeling spiritually healthy and human.

Harold Kushner

Our human bodies are miracles, not because they defy laws of nature, but precisely because they obey them.

Harold Kushner

Other people may complicate our lives, but life without them would be unbearably desolate. None of us can be truly human in isolation. The qualities that make us human emerge only in the ways we relate to other people.

Harold Kushner

The small choices and decisions we make a hundred times a day add up to determining the kind of world we live in.

Harold Kushner

God, who neither causes nor prevents tragedies, helps by inspiring people to help.

Harold Kushner

History is written by winners, so most history books are about people who win.

Harold Kushner

You don't have to be religious to have a soul; everybody has one. You don't have to be religious to perfect your soul; I have found saintliness in avowed atheists.

Harold Kushner

We can endure much more than we think we can; all human experience testifies to that. All we need to do is learn not to be afraid of pain. Grit your teeth and let it hurt. Don't deny it, don't be overwhelmed by it. It will not last forever. One day, the pain will be gone and you will still be there.

Harold Kushner

Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it.... What frustrates us and robs our lives of joy is this absence of meaning.... Does our being alive matter?

Harold Kushner

If we put our soul into our work, if, rather than just going through the motions, what we do flows from the deepest part of our being, then after a burst of creativity, we need to replenish our souls.

Harold Kushner

You don't become happy by pursuing happiness. You become happy by living a life that means something.

Harold Kushner

What cannot be achieved in one lifetime will happen when one lifetime is joined to another.

Harold Kushner

One man alone can't defeat the forces of evil, but many good people coming together can.

Harold Kushner

It is because you have the typical American habit of seeing everything as a test. You see the mountain as your enemy and you set out to defeat it. So, naturally, the mountain fights back and it is stronger than you are. We do not see the mountain as our enemy to be conquered. The purpose of our climb is to become one with the mountain and so it lifts us up and carries us along.

Harold Kushner

God is the light shining in the midst of darkness, not to deny that there is darkness in the world but to reassure us that we do not have to be afraid of the darkness because darkness will always yield to light. As theologian David Griffin puts in, God is all-powerful, His power enables people to deal with events beyond their control and He gives us the strength to do those things because He is with us.

Harold Kushner

Do things for people not because of who they are or what they do in return, but because of who you are.

Harold Kushner

God is like a mirror. The mirror never changes, but everybody who looks at it sees something different.

Harold Kushner

I am convinced that it is not the fear of death, of our lives ending, that haunts our sleep so much as the fear that as far as the world is concerned, we might as well never have lived.

Harold Kushner

I suspect that the happiest people you know are the ones who work at being kind, helpful and reliable - and happiness sneaks into their lives while they are busy doing those things. It is a by-product, never a primary goal.

Harold Kushner

Is there an answer to the question of why bad things happen to good people?...The response would be…to forgive the world for not being perfect, to forgive God for not making a better world, to reach out to the people around us, and to go on living despite it all…no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened.

Harold Kushner

That is why we have to make room in our lives for people who may sometimes disappoint or exasperate us. If we hold our friends to a standard of perfection, or if they do that to us, we will end up far lonelier than we want to be.

Harold Kushner

We cannot live without the knowledge that someone cares about us.

Harold Kushner

Integrity means being whole, unbroken, undivided. It describes a person who has united the different parts of his or her personality, so there is no longer a split in the soul... For the person of integrity, life may not be easy but it is simple: Figure out what is right and do it. All other considerations come in second.

Harold Kushner

Forgiveness is not a matter of exonerating people who have hurt you. They may not deserve exoneration. Forgiveness means cleansing your soul of the bitterness of what might have been, what should have been, and what didn't have to happen.

Harold Kushner

Harold Kushner

Harold Kushner

Born: April 3, 1935

Died: April 28, 2023 (aged 88)

Bio: Rabbi Harold Samuel Kushner was a prominent American rabbi aligned with the progressive wing of Conservative Judaism, and a popular author.

Known for:

When Bad Things Happen to Good People (1981)
When All You've Ever Wanted Isn't Enough (1986)
Overcoming Life's Disappointments (2006)
Who Needs God (1989)

Most used words:

Harold Kushner on Wikipedia

Suggest an edit or a new quote

American Rabbi Quotes

20th-century Rabbi Quotes