Martin Buber
Power abdicates only under the stress of counter-power.Collection: Stress
The world is not divine sport, it is divine destiny. There is a divine meaning of the world, of man, of human persons, of you and me.Collection: Sports
We should also pray for the wicked among the peoples of the world; we should love them too.Collection: Wicked
Dialogic is not to be identified with love. But love without dialogic, without real outgoing to the other, reaching to the other, the love remaining with itself - this is called Lucifer.Collection: Real
God is the "mysterium tremendum," that appears and overthrows, but he is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I.Collection: Self
The ones who count are those persons who - though they may be of little renown - respond to and are responsible for the continuation of the living spirit.Collection: Life
Creation happens to us, burns into us, changes us, we tremble and swoon, we submit. Creation - we participate in it, we encounter the creator, offer ourselves to him, helpers and companions.Collection: Inspirational
For sin is just this, what man cannot by its very nature do with his whole being; it is possible to silence the conflict in the soul, but it is not possible to uproot itCollection: Men
It pains me to speak of God in the third person.Collection: Pain
In the story of the Creation we read: ". . . And behold, it was very good." But, in the passage where Moses reproves Israel, the verse says: "See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil." Where did the evil come from? Evil too is good. It is the lowest rung of perfect goodness. If you do good deeds, even evil will become good; but if you sin, evil will really become evil.Collection: Israel
To him who knows how to read the legend, it conveys more truth than the chronicle.Collection: Legends
When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.Collection: Light
Feeling one "has"; love occurs.Collection: Empathy
The I of the basic word I-Thou is different from that of the basic word I-It.Collection: Different
If we had the power over the ends of the earth, it would not give us that fulfillment of existence which a quiet devoted relationship to nearby life can give us.Collection: Giving
Freedom and destiny are solemnly promised to one another and linked together in meaning.Collection: Destiny
Nothing can doom man but the belief in doom, for this prevents the movement of return.Collection: Men
He who desires to become aware of the hidden light must lift the feeling of fear up to its source. And he can accomplish this if he judges himself and all he does. For then he sheds all fears and lifts fear that has fallen down. But if he does not judge himself, he will be judged from on high, and this judgment will come upon him in the guise of countless things, and all the things in the world will become messengers of God who carry out the judgment on this man.Collection: Men
Jedes geeinzelte Du ist ein Durchblick zu ihm. Durch jedes geeinzelte Du spricht das Grundwort das Ewige an. Every particularThou is a glimpse through to the eternal Thou; by means of every particularThou the primary word addresses the eternal Thou. 164Collection: Mean
Religion means goal and way, politics implies end and means. The political end is recognizable by the fact that it may be attained--in success--and its attainment is historically recorded. The religious goal remains, even in man's highest experiences, that which simply provides direction on the mortal way; it never enters into historical consummation.Collection: Religious
I have learned a new form of service from the wars of Frederick, king of Prussia. It is not necessary to approach the enemy in order to attack him. In fleeing from him, it is possible to circumvent him as he advances and fall on him from the rear and force him to surrender. What is needed is not to strike straight at evil but to withdraw to the sources of divine power, and from there to circle around evil, bend it and transform it into its opposite.Collection: Kings
The tradition of the camp fire faces that of the pyramid.Collection: Fire
If a person kills a tree before its time, it is like having murdered a soul.-Rabbi NachmanCollection: Tree
I'm not sure I can take your advice. You are dealing with English Gentlemen. We are dealing with monsters.Collection: Peace
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.Collection: Men
The prophet is appointed to oppose the kind, and even more: history.Collection: Kindness
The world is a spinning die, and everything turns and changes: man is turned into angel, and angel into man, and the head into the foot, and the foot into the head. Thus all things turn and spin and change, this into that, and that into this, the topmost to the undermost, and the undermost to the topmost. For at the root all is one, and salvation inheres in the change and return of things.Collection: Angel
Read the Bible as though it were something entirely unfamiliar, as though it had not been set before you ready-made. Face the book with a new attitude as something new.Collection: Bible
The salvation of man does not lie in his holding himself far removed from the worldly, but in consecrating it to holy, to divine meaning.Collection: Lying
Mundus vult decipi: the world wants to be deceived.Collection: Latin
Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos.Persons appear byentering into relationwith other persons.Collection: Ego
To begin with oneself but not to end with onself. To start from oneself but not to aim at oneself.Collection: Ends
The historical religions have the tendency to become ends in themselves, and, as it were, to put themselves in God's place, and, in fact, there is nothing that is so apt to obscure God's face as a religion.Collection: Historical
There is no room for God in him who is full of himself.Collection: Humility
We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.Collection: Should
We can be redeemed only to the extent to which we see ourselves.Collection: Empathy
When I meet a man, I am not concerned about his opinions. I am concerned about the man.Collection: Men
To love God truly, one must first love man. And if anyone tells you that he loves God and does not love his fellow-man, you will know that he is lying.Collection: Lying
When a man has made peace within himself, he will be able to make peace in the whole world.Collection: Men
God made so many different kinds of people; why would God allow only one way to worship?Collection: Humility
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. We cannot avoid, Using power, Cannot escape the compulsion, To afflict the world, So let us, cautious in diction, And mighty in contradiction, Love powerfully.Collection: Life
One cannot in the nature of things expect a little tree that has been turned into a club to put forth leaves.Collection: Tree
I don't like religion much, and I am glad that in the Bible the word is not to be found.Collection: Religion
If you want to raise a man from mud and filth, do not think it is enough to stay on top and reach a helping hand down to him. You must go all the way down yourself, down into mud and filth. Then take hold of him with strong hands and pull him and yourself out into the light.Collection: Strong
Man is like a tree. If you stand in front of a tree and watch it incessantly, to see how it grows, and to see how much it has grown, you will see nothing at all. But tend it at all times, prune the runners and keep it free of beetles and worms, and all in good time-it will come into its growth. It is the same with man: all that is necessary is for him to overcome his obstacles, and he will thrive and grow. But it is not right to examine him hour after hour to see how much has already been added to his stature.Collection: Men
In the beginning was the relationship.Collection: Empathy
Everyone has in him something precious that is in no one else.Collection: Strength
Man wishes to be confirmed in his being by man, and wishes to have a presence in the being of the other…. Secretly and bashfully he watches for a YES which allows him to be and which can come to him only from one human person to another.Collection: Men
Every man's foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, and be it even the greatest, has already achieved.Collection: Unique