Jewish Guilt Quotes & Sayings

In the Muslim world, there are many people who have been vocal and we have been very vocal against extremists. But how to win this battle is an ongoing battle. And we must continue to wage the battle for peace. — Feisal Abdul Rauf

You see, sex for Jews is not such a terrible sin. It's just one more physical sport we're gonna stink at. — Jaffe Cohen

Father, I can't take this," I said.
"Why not?"
"Because you're a priest, Father."
"And my money's no good because of it? What are you? A member of the Masonic Lodge?"
"Naw, Father," I said. "I just feel guilty taking money from you."
"Well, you're Irish and Jewish. You have to feel guilty over somethin', don't ya? Take the money and be happy ye have it. — John William Tuohy

I've got the Jewish guilt and the Irish shame and it's a hell of a job distinguishing which is which. — Kevin Kline

Purim, one of my favorite holidays. It's like the original drag queen's holiday. It's when all the Jewish men go for it and feel no guilt for a change. — Sandra Bernhard

Hitler's architect and later Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer. Speer had been imprisoned for his role in the use of slave labor during the war, but though he was found guilty for a number of crimes, and served nineteen years in prison, upon his release which was supported by such people as French president Charles DeGaulle and other high-ranking politicians, he was considered in many ways a "good German". He had admitted his guilt at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials after the war, and acknowledged that the crimes committed under Hitler would haunt Germany forever. He wrote his memoirs in prison and spoke not only about his complicity in the use of slave labor but also his attempts to thwart some of Hitler's more barbaric plans at the end of the war. Much of the proceeds from his bestselling memoirs went to Jewish organizations, though this was not discovered until after Speer had died. — Leonard Cooper

To Your eyes a thousand years are like yesterday come and gone, no more than a watch in the night.
You sweep men away like a dream, like grass which springs up in the morning.
In the morning it springs up and flowers, by evening it withers and fades.
So we are destroyed in Your anger, struck with terror in Your fury.
Our guilt lies open before You; our secrets in the light of Your face.
All our days pass away in Your anger. Our life is over like a sigh.
Our span is seventy years or eighty for those who are strong. And most of these are emptiness and pain, they pass swiftly and we are gone. — Psalm 89

I don't have that kind of Southern experience, of the fire-and-brimstone preacher type of thing. Certainly not in my comedy. I come more from the guilt-ridden, neurotic type of [ - ] I have more in common with the Jewish brand of comedy. — Larry Wilmore

I think a reading group should have a snappy name to attract members, don't you?'
Mr Peterson didn't ask about my snappy name, but I could tell his curiosity was piqued.
'The Secular Church of Kurt Vonnegut,' I said.
'Jesus F Christ,' said Mr Peterson. — Gavin Extence

I get anxious. That lovely Jewish guilt that comes with ancestry. — Maya Rudolph

My daughter Gabby very kindly once said that she thinks I was a better mother because I was doing a job I loved. I now think guilt is a universal part of being a mother. I used to think it was Jewish-mother guilt but now I think it is working-mother guilt. — Donna Karan

My mother should have been Jewish. She could have taught a class on how to induce guilt. — Lorna Luft

Why don't you want to be Jewish anymore?"
"I'm tired of the guilt. That enormous nagging historical guilt."
"What guilt?"
"The guilt of being innocent victims. — Don DeLillo

My identity has always been confused. Born in Edinburgh of a Scottish/Russian/Jewish mother and an English/Irish/Catholic father, there is no form of guilt to which I was not subjected in my childhood. Members of my immediate family live all over the world - a diaspora of cousins, aunts, uncles and more in a dizzying mix. — Sara Sheridan

All the past is not worth one today. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I think what Jewish culture taught me and what the - and Jewish culture now is everyone's culture - is all these embarrassing things, all these guilt-filled things, all these anxiety filled things are material. — Robert Mankoff

When he was thirteen, he used an anti-Semitic epithet to describe a Jewish friend. Thinking of the moment more than seven decades later, Bush volunteered the story and cried, shaken by guilt over a remark made in the 1930s. He shook his head in wonder at his own insensitivity. "Never forgotten it. Never forgotten it." (The classmate remained a Bush friend and supporter for many years.) — Jon Meacham

I even felt a vicarious guilt, like a German meeting Jewish people in Poland who had never heard of the Holocaust, or that there were Jews in America, and trying to explain it to them. Ashea, I wished I could say. Ashea. — Neil Peart

You don't get bored making an album. — Alison Goldfrapp

I remember as a child of eight being told by a young friend that I had killed Christ. That was news to me. It's a common experience for the Jewish young. Should later generations of Germans be burdened with the guilt arising from the profound inhumanity of their ancestors? Revenge may be sweet, but guilt is non-transferable. Still, hatreds survive with the persistence of cockroaches. — Sid Fleischman

Hey umm ... Mikayla?" Jake says. Pitch, hit, chase, repeat.
Jake barely ever calls me Mikayla, so what ever it is he's about to say, I'm already paying attention.
"Yeah?" I answer, wariness in my voice.
"Umm, I know that uhh," he clears his throat, takes his cap off, runs his hand through his hair, then replaces the cap, backwards. Nervous habit. Shit.
"I know that you wear your mom's engagement ring, but umm ... I mean, what happens if, I mean when, a guy, uh, hopefully me. I mean, what happens if ... when ... said guy, me, wants to propose? — Jay McLean

I'm Jewish, but my mom's Catholic, so the guilt area is covered. I have the highest expectations, along with the lowest. I tried to put as much of myself as possible in Reality Bites, but in terms of my humor, I'm still trying to figure out what my sensibility is. It's a process, really. I don't feel like I have a very clear idea of what I'm supposed to be, or even of how people perceive me, except that I got put into this Generation X file. — Ben Stiller

Guilt is a Jewish invention improved upon by Christians for the last two thousand years. — Rita Mae Brown

Fear drives you and makes you better. — Donna Shalala