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Fellowship depends on appreciation while manipulation is the cause of alienation: objects and I apart, things stand dead, and I am alone. What is more decisive: a life of manipulation distorts the image of the world. Reality is equated with availability: What I can manipulate is, what I cannot manipulate is not. A life of manipulation is the death of transcendence.

— Abraham Joshua Heschel Who Is Man? (1965)

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More quotes by Abraham Joshua Heschel

Faith is not belief, an assent to a proposition, faith is attachment to the meaning beyond the mystery.

Who Is Man? (1965)

Love of ultimate meaning is not self-centered but rather a concern to transcend the self.

Who Is Man? (1965)

We manipulate what is available on the surface of the world; we must also stand in awe before the mystery of the world.

Who Is Man? (1965)

My power of probing is easily exhausted, my words fade, but what I sense is not emptiness but inexhaustible abundance, ineffable abundance.

Who Is Man? (1965)

Faith is something that comes out of the soul. It is not an information that is absorbed but an attitude, existing prior to the formulation of any creed.

Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Abraham Joshua Heschel (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.