Martin Buber Quotes

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You do not attain to knowledge by remaining on the shore and watching the foaming waves, you must make the venture and cast yourself in, you must swim, alert and with all your force, even if a moment comes when you think you are losing consciousness; in this way, and in no other, do you reach anthropological insight.
Martin Buber Quotes: You do not attain to
If we had the power over the ends of the earth, it would not give us that fulfillment of existence which a quiet devoted relationship to nearby life can give us.
Martin Buber Quotes: If we had the power
The perpetual enemy of faith in the true God is not atheism (the claim that there is no God), but rather Gnosticism (the claim that God is known).
Martin Buber Quotes: The perpetual enemy of faith
What has to be given up is not the I, but that drive for self-affirmation which impels man to flee from the unreliable, unsolid, unlasting, unpredictable, dangerous world of relation into the having of things.
Martin Buber Quotes: What has to be given
A story must be told in such a way that it constitutes help in itself. My grandfather was lame. Once they asked him to tell a story about his teacher. And he related how his teacher used to hop and dance while he prayed. My grandfather rose as he spoke, and he was so swept away by his story that he began to hop and dance to show how the master had done. From that hour he was cured of his lameness. That's how to tell a story.
Martin Buber Quotes: A story must be told
God said to Abraham: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee." God says to man: "First, get you out of your country, that means the dimness you have inflicted on yourself. Then out of your birthplace, that means out of the dimness your mother inflicted on you. After that, out of the house of your father, that means out of the dimness your father inflicted on you. Only then will you be able to go to the land that I will show you"
Martin Buber Quotes: God said to Abraham:
What is it that is eternal: the primal phenomenon, present in the here and now, of what we call revelation? It is man's emerging from the moment of the supreme encounter, being no longer the same as he was when entering into it.
Martin Buber Quotes: What is it that is
If you cannot get across it, you must get across it, nevertheless.
Martin Buber Quotes: If you cannot get across
Every person born in this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique.
Martin Buber Quotes: Every person born in this
The Two Caps Rabbi David Moshe, the son of the rabbi of Rizhyn, once said to a hasid: "You knew my father when he lived in Sadagora and was already wearing the black cap and going his way in dejection; but you did not see him when he lived in Rizhyn and was still wearing his golden cap." The hasid was astonished. "How is it possible that the holy man from Rizhyn ever went his way in dejection! Did not I myself hear him say that dejection is the lowest condition!" "And after he had reached the summit," Rabbi David replied, "he had to descend to that condition time and again in order to redeem the souls which had sunk down to it.
Martin Buber Quotes: The Two Caps Rabbi David
The prophet is appointed to oppose the kind, and even more: history.
Martin Buber Quotes: The prophet is appointed to
Without being and remaining oneself, there is no love.
Martin Buber Quotes: Without being and remaining oneself,
God wants man to fulfill his commands as a human being and with the quality peculiar to human beings.
Martin Buber Quotes: God wants man to fulfill
The future stands in need of you in order to be born.
Martin Buber Quotes: The future stands in need
The work produced is a thing among things, able to be experienced and described as a sum of qualities. But from time to time it can face the receptive beholder in its whole embodied form.
Martin Buber Quotes: The work produced is a
It was from Buber's other writings that I learned what could also be found in I and Thou: the central commandment to make the secular sacred.
Martin Buber Quotes: It was from Buber's other
All names of God remain hallowed because they have been used not only to speak of God but also to speak to him.
Martin Buber Quotes: All names of God remain
Whoever says You does not have something; he has nothing. But he stands in relation.
Martin Buber Quotes: Whoever says You does not
The philosophical anthropologist ... can know the wholeness of the person and through it the wholeness of man only when he does not leave his subjectivity out and does not remain an untouched observer.
Martin Buber Quotes: The philosophical anthropologist ... can
In spite of all similarities, every living situation has, like a newborn child, a new face, that has never been before and will never come again. It demands of you a reaction that cannot be prepared beforehand. It demands nothing of what is past. It demands presence, responsibility; it demands you.
Martin Buber Quotes: In spite of all similarities,
Every man's foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, and be it even the greatest, has already achieved.
Martin Buber Quotes: Every man's foremost task is
For sin is just this, what man cannot by its very nature do with his whole being; it is possible to silence the conflict in the soul, but it is not possible to uproot it.
Martin Buber Quotes: For sin is just this,
If a person kills a tree before its time, it is like having murdered a soul.-Rabbi Nachman
Martin Buber Quotes: If a person kills a
But when a man draws a lifeless thing into his passionate longing for dialogue, lending it independence and as it were a soul, then there may dawn in him the presentiment of a world-wide dialogue with the world-happening that steps up to him even in his environment, which consists partially of things. Or do you seriously think that the giving and taking of signs halts on the threshold of that business where an honest and open spirit is found?
Martin Buber Quotes: But when a man draws
The concept of guilt is found most powerfully developed even in the most primitive communal forms which we know: ... the man is guilty who violates one of the original laws which dominate the society and which are mostly derived from a divine founder; the boy who is accepted into the tribal community and learns its laws, which bind him thenceforth, learns to promise; this promise is often given under the sign of death, which is symbolically carried out on the boy, with a symbolical rebirth.
Martin Buber Quotes: The concept of guilt is
This is the sacrifice: the endless possibility that is offered up on the altar of the form ...
Martin Buber Quotes: This is the sacrifice: the
I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human face looking at me
Martin Buber Quotes: I do, indeed, close my
Trust, trust in the world, because this human being exists - that is the most inward achievement of the relation in education. Because this human being exists, meaninglessness, however hard pressed you are by it, cannot be the real truth. Because this human being exists, in the darkness the light lies hidden, in fear salvation, and in the callousness of one's fellow-men the great Love.
Martin Buber Quotes: Trust, trust in the world,
You can rake the muck this way, rake the muck that way
it will always be muck. Have I sinned or have I not sinned? In the time I am brooding over it, I could be stringing pearls for the delight of Heaven
Martin Buber Quotes: You can rake the muck
To be old can be glorious if one has not unlearned how to begin.
Martin Buber Quotes: To be old can be
The I of the basic word I-Thou is different from that of the basic word I-It.
Martin Buber Quotes: The I of the basic
We should also pray for the wicked among the peoples of the world; we should love them too.
Martin Buber Quotes: We should also pray for
One should hallow all that one does in one's natural life. One eats in holiness, tastes the taste of food in holiness, and the table becomes an altar. One works in holiness, and raises up the sparks which hide themselves in all tools. One walks in holiness across the fields, and the soft songs of all herbs, which they voice to God, enter into the song of our soul.
Martin Buber Quotes: One should hallow all that
I think no human being can give more than this. Making life possible for the other, if only for a moment.
Martin Buber Quotes: I think no human being
We say 'far away'; the Zulu has for that a word which means, in our sentence form, 'There where someone cries out: "Oh mother, I am lost." ' The Fuegian soars above our analytic wisdom with a seven-syllabled word whose precise making is, 'They stare at one another, each waiting for the other to volunteer to do what both wish, but are not able to do.
Martin Buber Quotes: We say 'far away'; the
Feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love. That is no metaphor, but the actual truth. Love does not cling to the I in such a way as to have the Thou only for its " content," its object; but love is between I and Thou. The man who does not know this, with his very being know this, does not know love; even though he ascribes to it the feelings he lives through, experiences, enjoys, and expresses.
Martin Buber Quotes: Feelings dwell in man; but
Real faith means holding ourselves open to the unconditional mystery which we encounter in every sphere of our life and which cannot be comprised in any formula. Real faith means the ability to endure life in the face of this mystery.
Martin Buber Quotes: Real faith means holding ourselves
Of Enoch, who walked with Elohim, it is told that he had become one of the angels who was all eyes and wings. Thus is the poet. Everything in him perceives the things, and everything in him flies past the things. He is wholly in the one thing that he experiences, and yet is already and still in all the others at the same time.
Martin Buber Quotes: Of Enoch, who walked with
I consider a tree.

I can look on it as a picture: stiff column in a shock of light, or splash of green shot with the delicate blue and silver of the background.

I can perceive it as movement: flowing veins on clinging, pressing pith, suck of the roots, breathing of the leaves, ceaseless commerce with earth and air - and the obscure growth itself.

I can classify it in a species and study it as a type in its structure and mode of life.

I can subdue its actual presence and form so sternly that I recognise it only as an expression of law - of the laws in accordance with which a constant opposition of forces is continually adjusted, or of those in accordance with which the component substances mingle and separate.

I can dissipate it and perpetuate it in number, in pure numerical relation.

In all this the tree remains my object, occupies space and time, and has its nature and constitution.

It can, however, also come about, if I have both will and grace, that in considering the tree I become bound up in relation to it. The tree is now no longer It. I have been seized by the power of exclusiveness.

To effect this it is not necessary for me to give up any of the ways in which I consider the tree. There is nothing from which I would have to turn my eyes away in order to see, and no knowledge that I would have to forget. Rather is everything, picture and movement, species and type, law and number,
Martin Buber Quotes: I consider a tree.<br /><br
Man wishes to be confirmed in his being by man, and wishes to have a presence in the being of the other ... .
Secretly and bashfully he watches for a YES which allows him to be and which can come to him only from one human person to another.
Martin Buber Quotes: Man wishes to be confirmed
It is not the nature of the task, but its consecration, that is the vital thing.
Martin Buber Quotes: It is not the nature
What is manifold is often frightening because it is not neat and simple. Men prefer to forget how many possibilities are open to them.
Martin Buber Quotes: What is manifold is often
A great relationship ... breaches the barriers of a lofty solitude, subdues its strict law, and throws a bridge from self-being to self-being across the abyss of dread of the universe.
Martin Buber Quotes: A great relationship ... breaches
This is the eternal origin of art that a human being confronts a form that wants to become a work through him. Not a figment of his soul but something that appears to the soul and demands the soul's creative power. What is required is a deed that a man does with his whole being..
Martin Buber Quotes: This is the eternal origin
About what mainly constituted what you ask, it was something other. It was just a certain inclination to meet people. And as far as possible, to change something in the other, but also to let me be changed by him. At any event, I had no resistance, I put no resistance to it. I already began as a young man. I felt I have not the right to want to change another if I am not open to be changed by him as far as it is legitimate.
Martin Buber Quotes: About what mainly constituted what
That I discovered the deed that intends me, that, this movement of my freedom, reveals the mystery to me. But this, too, that I cannot accomplish it the way I intended it, this resistance also reveals the mystery to me. He that forgets all being caused as he decides from the depths, he that puts aside possessions and cloak and steps bare before the countenance
this free human being encounters fate as the counter-image of his freedom. It is not his limit but his completion; freedom and fate embrace each other to form meaning; and given meaning, fate
with its eyes, hitherto severe, suddenly full of light
looks like grace itself.
Martin Buber Quotes: That I discovered the deed
What you must do is love your neighbor as yourself. There is no one who knows your many faults better than you! But you love yourself notwithstanding. And so you must love your neighbor, no matter how many faults you see in him.
Martin Buber Quotes: What you must do is
True beings are lived in the present, the life of objects is lived in the past.
Martin Buber Quotes: True beings are lived in
To love God truly, one must first love man. And if anyone tells you that he loves God and does not love his fellow-man, you will know that he is lying.
Martin Buber Quotes: To love God truly, one
In the beginning was the relationship.
Martin Buber Quotes: In the beginning was the
It pains me to speak of God in the third person.
Martin Buber Quotes: It pains me to speak
For Judaism, God is not a Kantian idea but an elementally present spiritual reality - neither something conceived by pure reason nor something postulated by practical reason, but emanating from the immediacy of existence as such, which religious man steadfastly confronts and nonreligious man evades.
Martin Buber Quotes: For Judaism, God is not
Creation is not a hurdle on the road to God, it is the road itself.
Martin Buber Quotes: Creation is not a hurdle
Marriage, for instance, will never be given new life except by that out of which true marriage always arises, the revealing by two people of the Thou to one another. Out of this a marriage is built up by the Thou that is neither of the I's. This is the metaphysical and metapsychical factor of love to which feelings of love are mere accompaniments.
Martin Buber Quotes: Marriage, for instance, will never
A person cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human. To become human, is what this individual person, has been created for.
Martin Buber Quotes: A person cannot approach the
I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man's life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.
Martin Buber Quotes: I do not accept any
Eclipse of the light of heaven, eclipse of God - such indeed is the character of the historic hour through which the world is now passing
Martin Buber Quotes: Eclipse of the light of
Everyone has in him something precious that is in no one else.
Martin Buber Quotes: Everyone has in him something
Everyone must come out of his Exile in his own way.
Martin Buber Quotes: Everyone must come out of
Freedom and destiny are solemnly promised to one another and linked together in meaning.
Martin Buber Quotes: Freedom and destiny are solemnly
The basic word I-Thou can be spoken only with one's whole being. The concentration and fusion into a whole being can never be accomplished by me, can never be accomplished without me. I require a Thou to become; becoming I, I say Thou.
Martin Buber Quotes: The basic word I-Thou can
Everything depends on inner change; when this has taken place, then, and only then does the world change.
Martin Buber Quotes: Everything depends on inner change;
Read the Bible as though it were something entirely unfamiliar, as though it had not been set before you ready-made. Face the book with a new attitude as something new.
Martin Buber Quotes: Read the Bible as though

What, then, does one experience of the You?
Nothing at all. For one does not experience it.
What, then, does one know of the You?
Only everything. For one no longer knows particulars.
Martin Buber Quotes: <br> What, then, does one
The world is a spinning die, and everything turns and changes: man is turned into angel, and angel into man, and the head into the foot, and the foot into the head. Thus all things turn and spin and change, this into that, and that into this, the topmost to the undermost, and the undermost to the topmost. For at the root all is one, and salvation inheres in the change and return of things.
Martin Buber Quotes: The world is a spinning
The historical religions have the tendency to become ends in themselves, and, as it were, to put themselves in God's place, and, in fact, there is nothing that is so apt to obscure God's face as a religion.
Martin Buber Quotes: The historical religions have the
When we rise out of [the night] into the new life and there begin to receive the signs, what can we know of that which - of him who gives them to us? Only what we experience from time to time from the signs themselves. If we name the speaker of this speech God, then it is always the God of a moment, a moment God.
Martin Buber Quotes: When we rise out of
No limits are set to the ascent of man, and to each and everyone the highest stands open. Here it is only your personal choice that decides.
Martin Buber Quotes: No limits are set to
The abyss and the light of the world,
Time's need and the craving for eternity,
Vision, event, and poetry:
Was and is dialogue with you.
Martin Buber Quotes: The abyss and the light
Feelings are 'entertained'; love comes to pass. Feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love.
Martin Buber Quotes: Feelings are 'entertained'; love comes
The doer cannot apprehend who the powers are whose emissary and acting agent he is; he must nevertheless be aware that the fullness of the world's destiny, namelessly interwoven, passes through his hands. It is said in the Mishnah, "Every man shall say: 'It is for me that the world was created.' "16 And again, "Every man shall say: 'The world rests on me,' " which is corroborated by the hasidic text: "Yes, he is the only one in the world, and its continued existence depends on his deed.
Martin Buber Quotes: The doer cannot apprehend who
When people come to you for help, do not turn them off with pious words, saying, 'Have faith and take your troubles to God.' Act instead as though there were no God, as though there were only one person in the world who could help
only yourself.
Martin Buber Quotes: When people come to you
Power abdicates only under stress of counter-power.
Martin Buber Quotes: Power abdicates only under stress
Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos.
Martin Buber Quotes: Egos appear by setting themselves
Play is the exultation of the possible.
Martin Buber Quotes: Play is the exultation of
Man is like a tree. If you stand in front of a tree and watch it incessantly, to see how it grows, and to see how much it has grown, you will see nothing at all. But tend it at all times, prune the runners and keep it free of beetles and worms, and all in good time-it will come into its growth. It is the same with man: all that is necessary is for him to overcome his obstacles, and he will thrive and grow. But it is not right to examine him hour after hour to see how much has already been added to his stature.
Martin Buber Quotes: Man is like a tree.
When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.
Martin Buber Quotes: When I confront a human
Everything is full of sacramental substance, everything. Each thing and each function is ever ready to light up into a sacrament.
Martin Buber Quotes: Everything is full of sacramental
But a person, I would say, is an individual living really with the world. And 'with' the world, I don't mean in the world- just in real contact, in real reciprocity with the world in all the points in which the world can meet man.
Martin Buber Quotes: But a person, I would
But it can also happen, if will and grace are joined, that as I contemplate the tree I am drawn into a relation, and the tree ceases to be an It ... Does the tree then have consciousness, similar to our own? I have no experience of that. But thinking that you have brought this off in your own case, must you again divide the indivisible? What I encounter is neither the soul of a tree nor a dryad, but the tree itself.
Martin Buber Quotes: But it can also happen,
There is something that can be found in one place. It is a great treasure which may be called the fulfillment of existence. The place where this treasure can be found is the place where one stands
Martin Buber Quotes: There is something that can
When I was young, I admired people who were clever. Now that I am old, I admire people who are kind.
Martin Buber Quotes: When I was young, I
When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.
Martin Buber Quotes: When two people relate to
As I actualize, I uncover.
Martin Buber Quotes: As I actualize, I uncover.
The salvation of man does not lie in his holding himself far removed from the worldly, but in consecrating it to holy, to divine meaning.
Martin Buber Quotes: The salvation of man does
Dialogic is not to be identified with love. But love without dialogic, without real outgoing to the other, reaching to the other, the love remaining with itself - this is called Lucifer.
Martin Buber Quotes: Dialogic is not to be
The third (sphere in which the world of relation arises): Life with spiritual beings.
Here the relations is wrapped in a cloud but reveals itself, it lacks but creates language. We hear no You and yet addressed; we answer - creating, thinking, acting: with our being we speak the basic word, unable to say You with our mouth.
Bt how can we incorporate into the world of the basic word that lies outside language?
Martin Buber Quotes: The third (sphere in which
All actual life is encounter.
Martin Buber Quotes: All actual life is encounter.
This is the risk: the primary word can only be spoken with the whole being. He who gives himself to it may withhold nothing of himself.
Martin Buber Quotes: This is the risk: the
Every journey has a secret destination of which the traveller is unaware.
Martin Buber Quotes: Every journey has a secret
Those who tell of two ways and praise one are recognized as prophets or great teachers. They save men from confusion and hard choices. They offer a single choice that is easy to make because those who do not take the path that is commended to them live a wretched life. To walk far on this path may be difficult, but the choice is easy, and to hear the celebration of this path is pleasant. Wisdom offers simple schemes, but truth is not so simple.
Martin Buber Quotes: Those who tell of two
We cannot avoid using power, cannot escape the compulsion to afflict the world, so let us, cautious in diction and mighty in contradiction, love powerfully.
Martin Buber Quotes: We cannot avoid using power,
Meet the world with the fullness of your being, and you shall meet God. Of you wish to believe, love.
Martin Buber Quotes: Meet the world with the
Nothing so tends to mask the face of God as religion; it can be a substitute for God himself.
Martin Buber Quotes: Nothing so tends to mask
And how shall we be able to tell whether he is a true zaddik?" The Baal Shem replied. "Ask him to advise you what to do to keep unholy thoughts from disturbing you in your prayers and studies. If he gives you advice, then you will know that he belongs to those who are of no account. For this is the service of men in the world to the very hour of their death; to struggle time after time with the extraneous, and time after time to uplift and fit it into the nature of the Divine Name.
Martin Buber Quotes: And how shall we be
As long as the firmament of the You is spread over me, the tempests of causality cower at my heels, and the whirl of doom congeals.
The human being to whom I say You I do not experience. But i stand in relation to him, in the sacred basic word. Only when I step out of this do I experience him again. Experience is remoteness from You.
Martin Buber Quotes: As long as the firmament
I shall teach you the best way to say Torah. You must cease to be aware of yourselves. You must be nothing but an ear that hears what the universe of the word is constantly saying within you. The moment you start hearing what you yourself are saying, YOU must stop.
Martin Buber Quotes: I shall teach you the
Inscrutably involved, we live in the currents of universal reciprocity.
Martin Buber Quotes: Inscrutably involved, we live in
As long as love is "blind" - that is, as long as it does not see a whole being - it does not yet truly stand under the basic word of relation. Hatred remains blind by its very nature; one can hate only part of a being.
Martin Buber Quotes: As long as love is
There is a hierarchy of deceptions. Near the bottom of the ladder is journalism: a steady stream of irresponsible distortions that most people find refreshing although on the morning after, or at least within a week, it will be stale and flat.
Martin Buber Quotes: There is a hierarchy of
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