Quotes By Lionel Blue

For some years I deserted religion in favour of Marxism. The republic of goodness seemed more attainable than the Kingdom of God.

I was certainly open for something being on the edge of a nervous breakdown, perplexed by my own sexuality. I was gay.

To my surprise, my 70s are nicer than my 60s and my 60s than my 50s, and I wouldn't wish my teens and 20s on my enemies.

I have ended as a Reform Rabbi, grateful to Christianity for so many good things.

It was admitted by the early rabbis that the sectarians could be as full of good works as eggs were full of meat.

I didn't want to be on the losing side. I was fed up with Jewish weakness, timidity and fear. I didn't want any more Jewish sentimentality and Jewish suffering. I was sickened by our sad songs.

At religious instruction classes, I encountered The Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan, and the sincerity of the traveller in that book was overwhelming.

Someone gave me a New Testament. I had never before read it systematically. Some parts made sense, some parts shocked me.

Praying privately in churches, I began to discover that heaven was my true home and also that it was here and now, woven into this life.

This Christian poison hasn't stopped yet.

Old friends die on you, and they're irreplaceable. You become dependent.

I literally fell among Quakers when I went up to Oxford.

For a Christian, Jesus is the unique and only way that God has fully revealed himself. For a Jew this cannot be.

Discrimination against Jews can be read in Thomas Aquinas, and insults against Jews in Martin Luther.

The Christian use of religion as a personal love affair both shocked me, and attracted me.

I began to see that my problems, seen spiritually, were really my soul's plusses.

To change, to convert? Why bother?