It is the beginning of wisdom to be amazed at the fact of our being free.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL
It is dangerous to take human freedom for granted, to regard it as a prerogative rather than as an obligation, as an ultimate fact rather than as an ultimate goal.
More Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes
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It is the beginning of wisdom to be amazed at the fact of our being free.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
New insight begins when satisfaction comes to an end, when all that has been seen, said, or done looks like a distortion. …
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The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.
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Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions.
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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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Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme.
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Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions. Source: The Wisdom of Heschel
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There is happiness in the love of labor, there is misery in the love of gain.
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The opposite of good is not evil, the opposite of good is indifference.
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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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I am still so surprised! That is why I am against it. We must learn to be surprised.
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It’s silence remains unbroken; no words can carry it away. Sometimes we wish the world could cry and tell us about that which made it pregnant with fear–filling grandeur.
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Morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.
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To abstain completely from all enjoyments may be easy. Yet to enjoy life and retain spiritual integrity – there is the challenge.
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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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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.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL