“We are obligated to be more scrupulous in fulfilling the commandment of charity than any other positive commandment because charity is the sign of a righteous man.”

—  Maimónides

As quoted in A Maimonides Reader (1972) by Isadore Twersky, p. 135. A footnote on this page states : tzedekah is translated as both "righteousness" and "charity".

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We are obligated to be more scrupulous in fulfilling the commandment of charity than any other positive commandment bec…" by Maimónides?
Maimónides photo
Maimónides 180
rabbi, physician, philosopher 1138–1204

Related quotes

Léon Foucault photo

“Above all, we must be accurate, and it is an obligation which we intend to fulfil scrupulously.”

Léon Foucault (1819–1868) French physicist

in Journal des débats, May 30th, 1848.

Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah photo

“On the other hand, Allah directs man to the spiritual purity through the act of giving that is represented by charity that the pious pays as "Zakat" and "Sadakat" almsgiving, and other financial obligations.”

Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah (1935–2010) Lebanese faqih

The mutual love between Allah and His servants http://english.bayynat.org.lb/Doctrines/Themutual1.htm

George Arnold photo

“The living need charity more than the dead.”

George Arnold (1834–1865) American author and poet

The Jolly Old Pedagogue.

Muhammad al-Taqi photo

“Man's death by sins is more than his death by fate and his life by charity is more than his life by age.”

Muhammad al-Taqi (811–835) ninth of the Twelve Imams of Twelver Shi'ism

[Baqir Sharīf al-Qurashi, The life of Imam Muhammad al-Jawad, Wonderful Maxims and Arts, 2005]

Thomas Browne photo

“But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world, yet is every man his greatest enemy, and as it were, his own executioner.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 4
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

John Ralston Saul photo

“The rise of democracy was driven by the citizens' desire to escape from the paternalistic and arbitrary charity of those with money. They accomplished this by replacing charity with a fair, balanced, arm's-length system of public obligation. The principle tool of that obligation was taxation.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Reflections of a Siamese Twin (1997)

John Wesley photo

“I observed, "Love is the fulfilling of the law, the end of the commandment." It is not only "the first and great" command, but all the commandments in one. "Whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise," they are all comprised in this one word, love.”

John Wesley (1703–1791) Christian theologian

Wesley quoting his own sermon on "The Circumcision of the Heart" (1 January 1733) in the work A Plain Account Of Christian Perfection (Edition of 1777)
General sources

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“A command can express no more than an ought or a shall, because it is a universal, but it does not express an ‘is’; and this at once makes plain its deficiency. Against such commands Jesus sets virtue, i. e., a loving disposition, which makes the content of the command superfluous and destroys its form as a command, because that form implies an opposition between a commander and something resisting the command.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate (1799)

“But in reason if one man has no right to command all other men--the expedient of despotism--neither has he any right to command even one other man; nor yet have ten men, or a million, the right to command even one other man, for ten times nothing is nothing, and a million times nothing is nothing.”

Isabel Paterson (1886–1961) author and editor

Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 122

William Westmoreland photo

“I learned much from General Gavin in his capacity as a division commander, particularly on leadership qualities and maintaining the morale of the troops. More than any other commander under whom I served, he impressed me with the necessity for a commander to be constantly visible to those he leads.”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

Source: A Soldier Reports (1976), p. 21.
Context: While in Sicily, I re-established an earlier acquaintance with a dynamic young colonel commanding one of the 82d Airborne's parachute infantry regiments, James M. Gavin, who later commanded the division. When the war was over, General Gavin asked my transfer to the division to command the 504th Parachute Infantry. Since I had yearned to be a paratrooper ever since serving at Fort Bragg in proximity to the first American airborne units, I was delighted at the assignment. I learned much from General Gavin in his capacity as a division commander, particularly on leadership qualities and maintaining the morale of the troops. More than any other commander under whom I served, he impressed me with the necessity for a commander to be constantly visible to those he leads.

Related topics