Man is naturally self-centered and he is inclined to regard expediency as the supreme standard for what is right and wrong.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHELTo us a single act of injustice–cheating in business, exploitation of the poor–is slight; to the prophets, a disaster.
More Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes
-
-
There is no specialized art of prayer. All of life must be a training to pray. We pray the way we live.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
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.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
God is not nice. God is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
I am still so surprised! That is why I am against it. We must learn to be surprised.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
A religious man is a person… whose greatest passion is compassion.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Friendship, a puzzle to the syllogistic and critical mentality, is not based on experiments or tests of another person’s qualities but on trust.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one’s actions. Source: The Wisdom of Heschel
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
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.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Few are guilty, but all are responsible.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Self-sufficiency, independence, the capacity to stand apart, to differ, to resist, and to defy-all are modes of being human.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
To be spiritual is to be amazed.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
To abstain completely from all enjoyments may be easy. Yet to enjoy life and retain spiritual integrity – there is the challenge.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
When religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
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
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
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;
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Wonder, or radical amazement, is a way of going beyond what is given in thing and thought, refusing to take anything for granted, to regard anything as final.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
It is of the essence of virtue that the good is not to be done for the sake of a reward.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
Ultimately there is no power to narcissistic, self-indulgent thinking. Authentic thinking originates with an encounter with the world.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL -
All events are secretly interrelated; the sweep of all we are doing reaches beyond the horizon of our comprehension.
ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL