Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes

Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.

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

To sing means to sense and to affirm that the spirit is real and that its glory is present.

Understanding God is not attained by calling into session all arguments for and against Him, in order to debate whether He is a reality or a figment of the mind. God cannot be sensed as a second thought, as an explanation of the origin of the universe. He is either the first and the last, or just another concept.

When I marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, I felt my legs were praying.

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

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.

...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.

People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state--it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle.... Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions. Source: The Wisdom of Heschel

Awe enables us to see in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple, to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.

The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.

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.

A soul can create only when alone.

In a controversy, the instant we feel anger, we have already ceased striving for truth and have begun striving for ourselves.

Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.

The test of love is in how one relates not to saints and scholars but to rascals.

Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man's attitude toward history and nature.

Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ....get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.

The course of life is unpredictable no one can write his autobiography in advance.

Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself. It is a silent justification affording evil acceptability in society.

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.

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

To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words.

To serve does not mean to surrender but to share.

Man's sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God.

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.

Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart. Audacious longing, burning songs, daring thoughts, an impulse overwhelming the heart, usurping the mind--these are all a drive towards serving Him who rings our hearts like a bell. It is as if He were waiting to enter our empty, perishing lives.

There is no specialized art of prayer. All of life must be a training to pray. We pray the way we live.

Life without commitment is not worth living.

The road to the sacred leads through the secular.

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

Self-respect is the fruit of discipline.

Every little deed counts.

It is dangerous to take human freedom for granted, to regard it as a prerogative rather than as an obligation, as an ultimate fact rather than as an ultimate goal. It is the beginning of wisdom to be amazed at the fact of our being free.

The tragedy of religion is partly due to its isolation from life, as if God could be segregated.

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

The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.

Only those will apprehend religion who can probe its depth, who can combine intuition and love with the rigor of method

Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.

Our age is one in which usefulness is thought to be the chief merit of nature; in which the attainment of power, the utilization of its resources is taken to be the chief purpose of man in God's creation. Man has indeed become primarily a tool-making animal, and the world is now a gigantic tool box for the satisfaction of his needs.

(People) can never attain fulfillment, or sense of meaning, unless it is shared, unless it pertains to other human beings.

We worship God through our questions.

to become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words...the tangent to the curve of human experience lies beyond the limits of language. the world of things we perceive is but a veil. It’s flutter is music, its ornament science, but what it conceals is inscrutable. It’s silence remains unbroken; no words can carry it away. Sometimes we wish the world could cry and tell us about that which made it pregnant with fear--filling grandeur. Sometimes we wish our own heart would speak of that which made it heavy with wonder.

Mundus vult decipi'—the world wants to be deceived. To live without deception presupposes standards beyond the reach of most people whose existence is largely shaped by compromise, evasion and mutual accommodation. Could they face their weakness, their vanity and selfishness, without a mask?

You must build your life as if it were a work of art.

People are anxious to save up financial means for old age; they should also be anxious to prepare a spiritual means for old age.... Wisdom, maturity, tranquility do not come all of a sudden when we retire.

Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of your universe. Each day enrapture me with your marvelous things without number. ...I do not ask to see the reason for it all: I ask only to share the wonder of it all.

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.