These Hebrew quotes will inspire you. Hebrew is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging Hebrew quotes, Hebrew sayings, and Hebrew proverbs.
Best Hebrew Quotes
- “Our society is illuminated by the spiritual insights of the Hebrew prophets. America and Israel have a common love of human freedom, and they have a common faith in a democratic way of life.” ~ Lyndon B. Johnson
- “The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.” ~ John Adams
- “He was the editor of our paper. He created the publishing house in Hebrew. He was – I wouldn’t say the “guru” – but really he was our teacher and a most respected man. I wrote for the paper of the youth movement.” ~ Shimon Peres
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“I speak fluent Hebrew and even dream in Hebrew when we visit there, once or twice a year.” ~ Natalie Portman
- “If we wish that the name Israel be not extinguished, then we are in duty bound to create something which may serve as a center for our entire people, like the heart in an organism, from which the blood will stream into all the arteries of the national body and fill it with life.” ~ Eliezer Ben-Yehuda
- “It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
- “But every great scripture, whether Hebrew, Indian, Persian, or Chinese, apart from its religious value will be found to have some rare and special beauty of its own; and in this respect the original Bible stands very high as a monument of sublime poetry and of artistic prose.” ~ Lafcadio Hearn
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“I learned enough Hebrew to stagger through a meaningless ceremony that I scarcely remember.” ~ David Antin
- “…the goal of all spiritual life is to get your ego out of the way – outwit the sucker; dissolve it; shoot it; kill it. Silence the incessant planning, organizing, running, manipulating, possessing, and processing”… “because these activities preclude awareness of the Divine.” ~ Lawrence Kushner , Hebrew quotes about life
- “Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel,. Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat. That is why gentiles were created.” ~ Ovadia Yosef
- “It’s not as if the New Testament writers came along and said, “The culmination of Old Testament books is more books, New Testament books.” In some ways they thought instead of the culmination of Old Testament books being Christ himself, the word incarnate as the opening verses of Hebrews 1 put it. In the past God spoke to the fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his son and the son is revelation.” ~ D. A. Carson
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“Hebrew word for “charity” tzedakah, simply means “justice” and as this suggests, for Jews, giving to the poor is no optional extra but an essential part of living a just life.” ~ Peter Singer
- “If you teach the Negro that he has accomplished as much good as any other race he will aspire to equality and justice without regard to race. Such an effort would upset the program of the oppressor in Africa and America. Play up before the Negro, then, his crimes and shortcomings. Let him learn to admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin and the Teuton. Lead the Negro to detest the man of African blood–to hate himself.” ~ Carter G. Woodson
- “Hope fills the afflicted soul with such inward joy and consolation, that it can laugh while tears are in the eye, sigh and sing all in a breath; it is called “the rejoicing of hope” (Hebrews 3:6).” ~ William Gurnall , Hebrew quotes about hope
- “Not now, for the last three thousand years, Hebrew has been penetrated and fertilized by ancient Semitic languages – by Aramaic, by Greek, by Latin, by Arabic, by Yiddish, by Latino, by German, by Russian, by English, I could go on and on. It’s very much like English.” ~ Amos Oz
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“There is no word in Hebrew for religion, by the way.” ~ Elie Wiesel
- “Some devout Christians are among the most fervent advocates of the death penalty, contradicting Jesus Christ and justifying their belief on an erroneous interpretation of Hebrew Scriptures. “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” their most likely response, overlooks the fact that this was promulgated by Moses as a limitation- a prohibition against taking both eyes or all of an offender’s teeth in retribution.” ~ Jimmy Carter
- “It is a fact that the classics of Yiddish literature are also the classics of the modern Hebrew literature.” ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer
- “Let all your preaching be in the most simple and plainest manner; look not to the prince, but to the plain, simple, gross, unlearned people, of which cloth the prince also himself is made. If I, in my preaching, should have regard to Philip Melancthon and other learned doctors, then should I do but little good. I preach in the simplest manner to the unskillful, and that giveth content to all. Hebrew, Greek and Latin I spare until we learned ones come together.” ~ Martin Luther
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“Sublimity is Hebrew by birth.” ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- “In case any are puzzled by the different translations from which I draw strength and help and delight, it is like this: In studying any object with the microscope we use different lenses and turn the mirror in various ways; each change brings out some new wonder and beauty. So it is for those who are not Greek or Hebrew scholars, and who use the work of scholars to open the meaning of the exhaustible Word-the Bible is richer than any single version can fully show.” ~ Amy Carmichael
- “Hebrew was frozen, like frozen peas, fresh out of the Bible.” ~ Etgar Keret , Hebrew quotes about strength
- “The Hebrew language… is the only glue which holds together our scattered bones. It also holds together the rings in the chain of time…. It binds us to those who built pyramids, to those who shed their blood on the ramparts of Jerusalem, and to those who, at the burning stakes, cried Shema Yisrael!” ~ I. L. Peretz
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“I think that, in Hebrew, it’s like the language creates a more unique and specific universe even before the story.” ~ Etgar Keret
- “The Hebrews have a saying that God is more delighted in adverbs than in nouns; it is not so much the matter that is done, but the matter how it is done, that God minds. Not how much, but how well! It is the well-doing that meets with a well-done. Let us therefore serve God, not nominally or verbally, but adverbially.” ~ Ralph Venning
- “Here I am, a Palestinian Arab who only knows how to write in Hebrew, stuck in central Illinois.” ~ Sayed Kashua
- “We must learn that competence is better than extravagance, that worth is better than wealth, that the golden calf we have worshiped has no more brains than that one of old which the Hebrews worshiped. So beware of money and of money’s worth as the supreme passion of the mind. Beware of the craving for enormous acquisition.” ~ C. A. Bartol
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“At McCormick Theological Seminary I had to take Hebrew, so I began to read prophetic poetry, and suddenly it became the life I wanted to spend.” ~ Hershel Shanks
- “I John Hancock, . . . being advanced in years and being of perfect mind and memory-thanks be given to God-therefore calling to mind the mortality of my body and knowing it is appointed for all men once to die [Hebrews 9:27], do make and ordain this my last will and testament…Principally and first of all, I give and recommend my soul into the hands of God that gave it: and my body I recommend to the earth . . . nothing doubting but at the general resurrection I shall receive the same again by the mercy and power of God. . .” ~ John Hancock
- “[On the New Testament:] I … must enter my protest against the false translation of some passages by the men who did that work, and against the perverted interpretation by the men who undertook to write commentaries thereon. I am inclined to think, when we [women] are admitted to the honor of studying Greek and Hebrew, we shall produce some various readings of the Bible a little different from those we now have.” ~ Sarah Moore Grimke
- “The word resentment means to re-feel…to feel again. Someone wrongs or wounds you; in resenting it, you re-feel the injury. And you re-hurt yourself. The Hebrew Talmud says that a person who bears a grudge is “Like one who, having cut one hand while handling a knife, avenges himself by stabbing the other hand.”” ~ Norman Vincent Peale
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“Man arose to high moral vision two thousand years before the Hebrew nation was born.” ~ James Henry Breasted
- “”You ought to be ashamed,” a woman in an Easter bonnet told Stein. “Your race gave us our religion…” “From ancient polytheism, the belief in lots of gods,” the woman continued a little more eruditely, “the Hebrew nation led us on to the idea that there is only one.” “Which is just a step from the truth,” said Stein.” ~ Peter De Vries
- “Manly natural religion – it is not joining the Church; it is not to believe in a creed, Hebrew, Protestant, Catholic, Trinitarian, Unitarian, Nothingarian. It is not to keep Sunday idle; to attend meetings; to be wet with water; to read the Bible; to offer prayers in words; to take bread and wine in the meeting house; love a scape-goat Jesus, or any other theological clap-trap.” ~ Theodore Parker , Hebrew quotes about love
- “in order to confer their lost Nationality upon exiled Jews , the British with the help of the League of Nations began to rehabilitate the old Hebrew country, Palestine, with its long lost children. The Jews had maintained their race, religion, culture and language; and all they wanted was their natural territory to complete their Nationality. The reconstruction of the Hebrew Nation on Palestine is just an affirmation of the fact that Country, Race, Religion, Culture and Language must exist unequivocally together to form the Nation idea.” ~ M. S. Golwalkar
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“Until mankind heeds the message on the Hebrew trumpet blown, and the faith of the whole world’s people is the faith that is our own.” ~ Israel Zangwill
- “Sirs, you are doubtlessly intelligent people, however, I have a problem understanding how you found a place in prophecy for those I know to be void of a even a single drop of Hebrew blood – without any cultural or historical ties to the Holy Land and in fact simple converts to a base form of Judaism. Clinton eulogized Rabinowitz (Yitzhak Rabin) as a son of David and a son of Solomon. You must know that this man was a Khazar of Turko- Mongolian lineage, and can in no way represent a ‘return’ since his southern Russian ancestors never made it down to Palestine until 1948.” ~ Dave Hunt
- “The Rulers of Russia, then, are Jewish Politicians, and they are applying to the world the doctrine of Karl Marx (Mordecai). Marx, was a clear and lucid Talmudist…full of that old Hebrew (sic) materialism which ever dreams of a paradise on earth and always rejects the hope held out of the chance of a Garden of Eden after Death.” ~ Bernard Lazare
- “When I write in Hebrew, I don’t look for sophistication in music; it’s just pure emotion that comes out.” ~ Yael Naim
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“However, the word madda in modern Hebrew specifically means science.” ~ Norman Lamm
- “Latin! The language of God! Or perhaps He speaks Hebrew? I suppose that’s more likely and it will make things rather awkward in heaven, won’t it? Will we all have to learn Hebrew?” ~ Bernard Cornwell
- “We are not saved by feelings of sorrow over Jesus’ death. We are saved when the Word of God ‘pierces’ our hearts (Hebrews 4:12), when we are convicted of our sins and trust Christ by faith.” ~ R. L. Hymers, Jr.
- “Had the Hebrews not been disturbed in their progress a thousand and more years ago, they would have solved all the great problems of civilization which are being solved now under all the difficulties imposed by the spirit of the Middle Ages.” ~ Isaac Mayer Wise
- “He was born a King. The wise men came from the East and asked, ‘Where is He that is born King of the Jews?’ (Matthew 2:2). He died a King.
In Greek, in Latin, and in Hebrew the description was written above His cross, ‘This is Jesus, The King’ (Matthew 27:37)” ~ W. A. Criswell -
“The Hebrews took for their idol, not something made of metal or wood, but a race, a nation, something just as earthly. Their religion is essentially inseparable from such idolatry, because of the notion of the ‘chosen people’.” ~ Simone Weil
- “The first book ever written in an alphabet was the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. And the most important passage was the Ten Commandments. The first commandment is the most revolutionary sentence ever written. It states: “I am the Lord thy God there is no other.” The second prohibits us from making images. Thus, there is a profound rejection of any goddess influence and a ban of representative art.” ~ Leonard Shlain
- “Every Hebrew should look upon his Faith as a temple extending over every land to prove the immutability of God and the unity of His purposes.” ~ Grace Aguilar
- “If you suspect that my interest in the Bible is going to inspire me with sudden enthusiasm for Judaism and make me a convert of mountain-moving fervor and that I shall suddenly grow long earlocks and learn Hebrew and go about denouncing the heathen – you little know the effect of the Bible on me. Properly read, it is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.” ~ Isaac Asimov
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“The assets of the Jewish National Home must be created exclusively through our own work, for only the product of the Hebrew labor can serve as the national estate.” ~ David Ben-Gurion
- “Hebrews . This book is much superior to most of the writings attributed to St. Paul, though passages in the other books are very admirable.” ~ James F. Cooper
- “A Hebrew knelt in the dying light, His eye was dim and cold; The hairs on his brow were silver white, And his blood was thin and old.” ~ Thomas Kibble Hervey
- “Whatever… you pretend… if any of you be a prayerless person, or a scoffer, or a lover of evil company, in a word, if you are not a holy, strict, and self-denying Christian, you cannot be saved.” ~ Joseph Alleine
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“When I say a spoken Hebrew sentence, half of it is like the King James Bible and half of it is a hip-hop lyric. It has a roller-coaster effect.” ~ Etgar Keret
- “You could be attached to merely a description of a plant or a flower. Or a narrative of an event. Or rage at injustice. Isaiah and the other Hebrew prophets, in their rage, were being altogether attached – not at all detached, although as I think of the word “detachment,” I also think of a sheet of paper, loose from its notebook, fluttering around somewhere in the wind trying to find its home again.” ~ Gerald Stern
- “Scholars of the Hebrew bible define something they call wisdom literature and I would say clearly the poetry of wisdom is something that comes with age or that might come with age which has to do with reflecting on experience.” ~ Edward Hirsch
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“The Hebrew Bible defines Judaism. It’s certainly true that the Talmudic interpretations become authoritative and normative, but they are interpretations of the Hebrew Bible. So that is always there.” ~ Frank Moore Cross
- “Literature, the study of literature in English in the 19th century, did not belong to literary studies, which had to do with Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, but instead with elocution and public speaking. So when people read literature, it was to memorize and to recite it.” ~ Robert Hass
- “After [Bill Shawn] was fired, I was going to the YMHA [Young Men’s Hebrew Association] on the Upper East Side to do a talk on free speech.I went into a coffee shop to get a piece of pie and a coffee, and I was reading a paper and I hear a voice. And it was -it was not a voice I was familiar with, but I looked across the table and I saw Lilian Ross.And sitting next to her was William Shawn – no tie, needed a shave. His voice was kind of coarse and rather loud. He wasn’t drunk, but I was just stunned.” ~ Nat Hentoff
- “I was fascinated by the lack of a word for a parent who has lost a child. We have no word in English. I thought for sure there’d be a word in Irish but there is none. And then I looked in several other languages and could not find one, until I found the word Sh’khol in Hebrew. I’m still not sure why so many languages don’t have a word for this sort of bereavement, this shadowing.” ~ Colum McCann
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“We may not see the connection between the name Jesus and the phrase “save his people from their sins,” but Joseph would have. He was familiar with the Hebrew language.” ~ Max Lucado
- “Because on that watch list, they would be like, yeah, your name – they told me like, yeah, your name matches the name of a terrorist or someone that they’re watching. I was just like, what terrorist is running around with a Hebrew first name and a Muslim – Arabic last – I’m like, who’s that guy?” ~ Mahershala Ali
- “Most of what the founders knew about the Hebraic Republic, it must be emphasized, they learned from the Bible. These Americans were well aware that ideas like republicanism found expression in traditions apart from the Hebrew experience, and, indeed, they studied these traditions both ancient and modern.” ~ Daniel L Dreisbach
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“The English name Jesus traces its origin to the Hebrew word Yeshua. Yeshua is a shortening of Yehoshuah, which means “Yahweh saves.”” ~ Max Lucado
- “It is always amusing to me and delightful of course that my books sell so well in America and other parts of the world. I can’t imagine what people must think as they read my books in Poland. Or in Hebrew and Greek. People are reading all the stories which are about bits of Western Australia.” ~ Tim Winton
- “Regarding the children in Israel who made the first known world change in history using the Bible Code, they left a statement which they wrote on a rock, in Hebrew: “If it is not simple, it simply will not be,” meaning that they have decided that if there is not an innocence, a simplicity in the actions of the world, they are simply going to erase it.” ~ Drunvalo Melchizedek\
