We can do justice to human being only by relating it to the transcendent care for being.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELThe self is not the hub but the spoke of the revolving wheel. It is precisely the function of prayer to shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender.
More Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes
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However, we must not convert an inclination into an axiom that just as man’s perceptions cannot operate outside time and space, so his motivations cannot operate outside expediency;
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The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God. One cannot pray unless he has faith in his own ability to accost the infinite, merciful, eternal God.
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A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children.
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Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me.
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It is not enough for me to ask question; I want to know how to answer the one question that seems to encompass everything I face: What am I here for?
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The degree to which one is sensitive to other people’s suffering, to other (people’s) humanity, is the index of one’s own humanity
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In a controversy, the instant we feel anger, we have already ceased striving for truth and have begun striving for ourselves.
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There is no answer to Auschwitz…To try to answer is to commit a supreme blasphemy. Israel enables us to bear the agony of Auschwitz without radical despair
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The opposite of good is not evil, the opposite of good is indifference.
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Loyal to the presence of the ultimate in the common, we may be able to make it clear that man is more than man, that in doing the finite he may perceive the infinite .
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It is the beginning of wisdom to be amazed at the fact of our being free.
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Man’s sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God.
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We use words as tools. We forget that words are a repository of the spirit. The tragedy of our times is that the vessels of the spirit are broken.
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Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.
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To us a single act of injustice–cheating in business, exploitation of the poor–is slight; to the prophets, a disaster.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL






