This may be the vocation of man: to say “Amen” to being and to the Author of being; to live in defiance of absurdity, notwithstanding futility and defeat; to attain faith in God even in spite of God.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELThe supremacy of expediency is being refuted by time and truth.
More Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes
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We cannot approach the spirit unless we repair the vessels. Reverence for words – an awareness of the wonder of words, of the mystery of words – is an essential prerequisite for prayer.
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Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation.
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Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state–it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle.
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All events are secretly interrelated; the sweep of all we are doing reaches beyond the horizon of our comprehension.
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Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ….get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted.
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We forfeit the right to worship God as long as we continue to humiliate negroes. … The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.
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Human being is both being in the world and living in the world. Living involves responsible understanding of one’s role in relation to all other beings.
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Then comes the insight that All is God. One still realizes that the world is as it was, but it does not matter, it does not affect one’s faith.
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Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power…Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.
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In the midst of our applauding the feats of civilization, the Bible flings itself like a knife slashing our complacency; remind us that God, too, has a voice in history.
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Religion has become an impersonal affair, an institutional loyalty. It survives on the level of activities rather than in the stillness of commitment.
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Faith is something that comes out of the soul. It is not an information that is absorbed but an attitude, existing prior to the formulation of any creed.
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Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.
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When I marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, I felt my legs were praying.
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The 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.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL