Jonathan Safran Foer Quotes

Ethics is in its unqualified form extended responsibility with regard to everything that has life.

Immoral is choosing not to act when you hold in your hands the power to create perfection.

We will be judged. There will be an accounting; there will be a reckoning sooner or later. It will either come from ourselves and our own conscience, or it will come from our kids when they ask that inconvenient question: 'What were you doing when they turned those kids back from the border?'

Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.

Silently the animal catches our glance. The animal looks at us, and whether we look away (from the animal, our plate, our concern, ourselves) or not, we are exposed. Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something

People have a right to ask questions and dig deep when you're hurting people and things around you.

They do injury to the good who spares the bad.

Someone once asked, 'What is the difference between me and Saddam Hussein?' The answer is, 'I have a conscience and he doesn't.'

'The Author' is a play about responsibility, how active we are as spectators and how responsible we are for what we choose to look at.

If the history of the Day of Atonement has anything to say to us now it is: never relieve individuals of moral responsibility. The more we have, the more we grow.

There's no difference between one's killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It's exactly the same thing, or even worse.

What is done cannot be effaced. We have to act upon a moral field prepared for us ...

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

Don't wait for the last judgment - it takes place every day.

True brothers don't let other brothers go down this path of irreparably damaging another human being as well as their own lives.

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

Inaction counted as a choice.

Idiots are not responsible for what they do. The real guilt falls on rational people who sit on their hands while morons run wild. You can opt out if you want to. Play it safe. But if you do, don't complain when the roof comes down.

Becoming a vegetarian is not merely a symbolic gesture. Nor is it an attempt to isolate oneself from the ugly realities of the world, to keep oneself pure and so without responsibility for the cruelty and carnage all around. Becoming a vegetarian is a highly practical and effective step one can take toward ending both the killing of nonhuman animals and the infliction of suffering on them.

You can be free from everything but the consequences of what you do.

Because he KNEW he was doing wrong. He felt the PAIN of his actions'-- 'But he did not amen them,' shows the Sky. 'The rest are worth as much as their pack animals,' I show, 'but worst is the one who knows better and does NOTHING.

It is not open to the cool bystander . . . to set himself up as an impartial judge of events which would never have occurred had he outstretched a helping hand in time.

Great power involves great responsibility

There's less of a connection for a lot of people between the technical decisions we make and the ethical ramifications we are responsible for.

Those who do not fear the sword they wield have no right to wield a sword at all. ~Shuhei Hisagi