45 quotes
All names of God remain hallowed because they have been used not only to speak of God but also to speak to him.
I and Thou (1923)
The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda.
Encounter with Martin Buber (1972)
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
The Legend of the Baal-Shem (1955)
Greatness by nature includes a power, but not a will to power.
Between Man and Man (1965)
When we see a great man desiring power instead of his real goal we soon recognize that he is sick, or more precisely that his attitude to his work is sick.
What is Man? (1938)
In the presence of God himself man stands always like a solitary tree in the wilderness.
For The Sake of Heaven (1945)
It is the highest service to submit the evil impulse to God through the power of love.
For The Sake of Heaven (1945)
Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.
Power and Love (1926)
Now, he no longer promises others the fulfillment of his duties, but promises himself the fulfillment of man.
Between Man and Man (1965)
Life, in that it is life, necessarily entails justice.
When we desire to lead men to God, we must not simply overthrow their idols. In each of these images we must seek to discover what divine quality he who carved it sought.
For The Sake of Heaven (1945)
The philosophical anthropologist … can know the wholeness of the person and through it the wholeness of man only when he does not leave his subjectivity out and does not remain an untouched observer.
What is Man? (1938)
As the oil is in the olive, so is the teshuvah, repentance, hidden within sin.
For The Sake of Heaven (1945)
To be old is a glorious thing when one has not unlearned what it means to begin, this old man had perhaps first learned it thoroughly in old age.
Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy (1952)
I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man's life.
Martin Buber : An Intimate Portrait (1971)
In the ice of solitude man becomes most inexorably a question to himself, and just because the question pitilessly summons and draws into play his most secret life he becomes an experience to himself.
What is Man? (1938)
Man must be free of it all, of his bad conscience and of the bad salvation from this conscience in order to become in truth the way. Now, he no longer promises others the fulfillment of his duties, but promises himself the fulfillment of man.
What is Man? (1938)
So long as you “have” yourself, have yourself as an object, your experience of man is only as of a thing among things.
What is Man? (1938)
The prophet is appointed to oppose the king, and even more: history.
BBC radio broadcast (1962)
God ... demands everything, in order to give everything anew to him who loves Him, after that loving has truly given up all.
For The Sake of Heaven (1945)