Mundus vult decipi’—the world wants to be deceived.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELThings, when magnified, are forgeries of happiness.
More Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes
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Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods.
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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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We can do justice to human being only by relating it to the transcendent care for being.
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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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In our daily lives we attend primarily to that which the senses are spelling out for us: to what the eyes perceive, to what the fingers touch.
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The supremacy of expediency is being refuted by time and truth.
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(People) can never attain fulfillment, or sense of meaning, unless it is shared, unless it pertains to other human beings.
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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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People are anxious to save up financial means for old age; they should also be anxious to prepare a spiritual means for old age….
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There is no specialized art of prayer. All of life must be a training to pray. We pray the way we live.
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We worship God through our questions.
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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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In the first way he sees in what surrounds him things to be handled, forces to be managed, objects to be put to use.
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Awe enables us to see in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance
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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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Prayer may not save us. But prayer may make us worthy of being saved.
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We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.
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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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When religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.
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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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The answers are questions in disguise, every new answer giving rise to new questions.
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Proximity to the crowd, to the majority view, spells the death of creativity. For a soul can create only when alone, and some are chosen for the flowering that takes place in the dark avenues of night.
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When I marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, I felt my legs were praying.
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Man is a messenger who forgot the message.
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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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The opposite of good is not evil, the opposite of good is indifference.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL