Top 100 Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes

#1. Who is a Jew? A person whose integrity decays when unmoved by the knowledge of wrong done to other people.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #65430
#2. We may not know whether our understanding is correct, or whether our sentiments are noble, but the air of the day surrounds us like spring which spreads over the land without our aid or notice.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #71656
#3. The task of life is to face sacred moments.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #87579
#4. Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #134055
#5. Faith opens our hearts for the entrance of the holy. It is almost as though God were thinking for us.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #188348
#6. Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #190226
#7. The surest way of misunderstanding revelation is to take it literally, to imagine that God spoke to the prophet on a long-distance telephone. Yet most of us succumb to such fancy, forgetting that the cardinal sin in thinking about ultimate issues is literal-mindedness.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #208530
#8. We may assume it is God we care for, but it may be our own ego we are concerned with. To examine our religious existence is, therefore, a task to be performed constantly.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #270872
#9. There are three starting points of contemplation about God; three trails that lead to Him. The first is the way of sensing the presence of God in the world, in things;9 the second is the way of sensing His presence in the Bible; the third is the way of sensing His presence in sacred deeds.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #283635
#10. We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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#11. When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #360905
#12. We can all do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and all frustrations and all disappointments.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #380045
#13. Faith is an awareness of divine mutuality and companionship, a form of communion between God and man. It is not a psychical quality, something that exists in the mind only, but a force from the beyond.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #394234
#14. Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows
with the ability to say no to oneself.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #401628
#15. This is one of the goals of the Jewish way of living: to experience commonplace deeds as spiritual adventures, to feel the hidden love and wisdom in all things.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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#16. 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, to sense a ray of God's radiance in the jungles of history.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #407355
#17. The solution of mankind's most vexing problem will not be found in renouncing technical civilization, but in attaining some degree of independence of it.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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#18. 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. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #419511
#19. To be is to stand for.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #439183
#20. This is the status of the Bible in modern life: it is a sublime answer, but we do not know the question any more. Unless we recover the question, there is no hope of understanding the Bible.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #451660
#21. 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.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #475322
#22. There are few ideas in the world of thought which contain so much spiritual power as the idea of the Sabbath. Aeons hence, when of many of our cherished theories only shreds will remain, that cosmic tapestry will continue to shine.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #486245
#23. The awe of God is wisdom.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #487064
#24. A soul can create only when alone ...

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #487098
#25. Religion has become an impersonal affair, an institutional loyalty. It survives on the level of activities rather than in the stillness of commitment.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #498973
#26. Things, when magnified, are forgeries of happiness.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #503560
#27. There is no reverence for God without reverence for man. Love of man is the way to the love of God.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #503761
#28. We worry a great deal about the problem of church and state. Now what about the church and God? Sometimes there seems to be a greater separation between the church and God than between the church and state.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #512648
#29. Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #545434
#30. Knowledge-like the sky- is never private property. No teacher has a right to withhold it from anyone who asks for it. Teaching is the art of sharing.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #577813
#31. Philosophy, to be relevant, must offer us a wisdom to live by.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #585853
#32. Those of faith who plant sacred thoughts in the uplands of time, the secret gardeners of the Lord in mankind's desolate hopes, may slacken and tarry but rarely betray their vocation.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #589661
#33. Our concern is not how to worship in the catacombs but how to remain human in the skyscrapers.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #612199
#34. God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #620879
#35. Awe rather than faith is the cardinal attitude of the religious Jew.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #653472
#36. The primary purpose of prayer is not to make requests. The primary purpose is to praise, to sing, to chant. Because the essence of prayer is a song, and man cannot live without a song.
Prayer may not save us. But prayer may make us worthy of being saved.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #663690
#37. It is not enough for me to ask question; I want to know how to answer the one question that seems to encompass everything I face: What am I here for?

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #676230
#38. In the darkest night to be certain of the dawn ... to go through Hell and to continue to trust in the goodness of God-this is the challenge and the way.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #682414
#39. 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.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #688526
#40. Faith like Job's cannot be shaken becasue it is the result of having been shaken.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #708446
#41. Prayer begins where our power ends.

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Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #712945
#42. To be spiritual is to be amazed.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #759495
#43. For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #776767
#44. Acceptance is appreciation, and the high value of appreciation is such that to appreciate appreciation seems to be the fundamental prerequisite for survival. Mankind will not die for lack of information; it may perish for lack of appreciation.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #795953
#45. Short is the way from need to greed.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #829588
#46. There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious. Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time; to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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#47. God is not nice. God is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #858798
#48. Modern man fell into the trap of believing that everything can be explained, that reality is a simple affair which has only to be organized in order to be mastered.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #864209
#49. The Sabbath is the day on which we learn the art of surpassing civilization.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #885126
#50. no man is free who is not a master of himself, that the more liberties we enjoy, the more discipline we need.46 Laissez-faire,

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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#51. Pagans exalt sacred things, the Prophets extol sacred deeds.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #910160
#52. A prophet's true greatness is his ability to hold God and man in a single thought.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #911375
#53. Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #940883
#54. The supremacy of expediency is being refuted by time and truth. Time is an essential dimension of existence defiant of man's power, and truth reigns in supreme majesty, unrivaled, inimitable, and can never be defeated.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #944149
#55. To try to distill the Bible, which is bursting with life, drama, and tension, to a series of principles would be like trying to reduce a living person to a diagram.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #958906
#56. Man is not a beast of burden, and the Sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of his work.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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#57. The work on weekdays and the rest on the seventh day are correlated. The Sabbath is the inspirer, the other days the inspired.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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#58. Labor is a blessing, toil is the misery of man.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1053160
#59. We must first peer into the darkness, feel strangled and entombed in the hopelessness of living without God, before we are ready to feel the presence of His living light.

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#60. To serve does not mean to surrender but to share.

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Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1096151
#61. It is of the essence of virtue that the good is not to be done for the sake of a reward.

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Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1106823
#62. 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.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1117526
#63. Prayer is not a stratagem for occasional use, a refuge to resort to now and then. It is rather like an established residence for the innermost self. All things have a home: the bird has a nest, the fox has a hole, the bee has a hive. A soul without prayer is a soul without a home.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1118919
#64. It is gratefulness which makes the soul great.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1133969
#65. The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted ... Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1138891
#66. To abstain completely from all enjoyments may be easy. Yet to enjoy life and retain spiritual integrity - there is the challenge.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1158034
#67. Replete is the world with a spiritual radiance, replete with sublime and marvelous secrets. But a small hand held against the eye hides it all," said the Baal Shem.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1179168
#68. I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas. This is to me the supreme Hasidic imperative: Don't be old. Don't be stale.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1194589
#69. The idea of dependence is an explanation, whereas self-sufficiency is an unprecedented, nonanalogous concept in terms of what we know about life within nature. Is not self-sufficiency itself insufficient to explain self-sufficiency?

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1243986
#70. To be or not to be is not the question, the vital question is how to be and how not to be ...

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1279430
#71. A religious man is a person ... whose greatest passion is compassion.

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#72. (People achieve) fullness of being in fellowship, in care for others.

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#73. Awareness of the divine begins with wonder.

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#74. Life without commitment is not worth living.

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Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1332208
#75. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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#76. How embarrassing for man to be the greatest miracle on earth and not to understand it!

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1385813
#77. Solitude is a necessary protest to the incursions and the false alarms of society's hysteria, a period of cure and recovery.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1395885
#78. As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation.

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Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1418141
#79. Few are guilty, but all are responsible.

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Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1440822
#80. He who is satisfied has never truly craved, and he who craves for the light of God neglects his ease for ardor.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1473036
#81. The course of life is unpredictable no one can write his autobiography in advance.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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#82. Self-sufficiency, independence, the capacity to stand apart, to differ, to resist, and to defy-all are modes of being human.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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#83. Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1497836
#84. (People) can never attain fulfillment, or sense of meaning, unless it is shared, unless it pertains to other human beings.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1517909
#85. The test of love is in how one relates not to saints and scholars but to rascals.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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#86. Philosophy may be defined as the art of asking the right question ... awareness of the problem outlives all solutions. The answers are questions in disguise, every new answer giving rise to new questions.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1593354
#87. 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.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1598228
#88. To us, recollection is a holy act; we sanctify the present by remembering the past. To us Jews, the essence of faith is memory. To believe is to remember.

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Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1629629
#89. The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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#90. 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

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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#91. The essence of man is not what he is, but in what he is able to be.

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Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1707315
#92. God is either of no importance, or of supreme importance.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1719022
#93. 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. It is our honest response to the grandeur and mystery of reality our confrontation with that which transcends the given.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1739435
#94. What seems to be a stone is a drama.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1803072
#95. Animal in man is the drive to concentrate on the satisfaction of needs; spiritual in man is the will to serve higher ends, and in serving ends he transcends his needs.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

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#96. 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.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1809269
#97. There is a built-in sense of indebtedness in the consciousness of man, an awareness of owing gratitude, or being caled upon at certain moments to reciprocate, to answer, to live in a way which is compatible with the grandeur and mystery of living.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1822194
#98. Forfeit your sense of awe, let your conceit diminish your ability to revere, and the universe becomes a market place for you.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1823958
#99. Zion is in ruins, Jerusalem lies in the dust. All week there is only hope of redemption. But when the Sabbath is entering the world, man is touched by a moment of actual redemption; as if for a moment the spirit of the Messiah moved over the face of the earth.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1835858
#100. 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. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes #1849690

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