The essence of man is not what he is, but in what he is able to be.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELPrayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods.
More Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes
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Prayer begins at the edge of emptiness.
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Society today is no longer in revolt against particular laws which it finds alien, unjust, and imposed, but against law as such, against the principle of law.
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For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs.
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Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you.
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A religious man is a person… whose greatest passion is compassion.
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Indeed, the sort of crimes and even the amount of delinquency that fill the prophets of Israel with dismay do not go beyond that which we regard as normal, as typical ingredients of social dynamics.
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In any free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty – all are responsible.
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God is either of no importance, or of supreme importance.
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Faith opens our hearts for the entrance of the holy. It is almost as though God were thinking for us.
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It is gratefulness which makes the soul great.
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Pagans exalt sacred things, the Prophets extol sacred deeds.
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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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Self-respect is the fruit of discipline.
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The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time.
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Man is naturally self-centered and he is inclined to regard expediency as the supreme standard for what is right and wrong.
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There is happiness in the love of labor, there is misery in the love of gain.
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There is a war to wage against the vulgar, the glorification of the absurd, a war that is incessant, universal.
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In the second way he sees in what surrounds him things to be acknowledged, understood, valued or admired.
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Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time; to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year.
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Being points beyond itself. Accustomed to think in terms of space, the expression “being points beyond itself” may be taken to denote a higher point in space.
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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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For living is not being in itself, but living of the world, affecting, exploiting, consuming, comprehending, deriving
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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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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.
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We may not know whether our understanding is correct, or whether our sentiments are noble, but the air of the day surrounds us like spring which spreads over the land without our aid or notice.
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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.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL