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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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Abraham Joshua Heschel
Age: 65 †
Born: 1907
Born: January 11
Died: 1972
Died: December 23
Judaic Scholar
Philosopher
Rabbi
University Teacher
Warszawa
Abraham Heschel
Different
Traditions
Faced
Reverence
Tolerance
Loyalty
Tradition
Religious
Problem
Combine

More quotes by Abraham Joshua Heschel

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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.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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
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Being is transcended by a concern for being. Our perplexity will not be solved by relating human existence to a timeless, subpersonal abstraction which we call essence. We can do justice to human being only by relating it to the transcendent care for being.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Faith like Job's cannot be shaken becasue it is the result of having been shaken.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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How embarrassing for man to be the greatest miracle on earth and not to understand it!
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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...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
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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
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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
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The essence of man is not what he is, but in what he is able to be.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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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A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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The tragedy of religion is partly due to its isolation from life, as if God could be segregated.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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(People) can never attain fulfillment, or sense of meaning, unless it is shared, unless it pertains to other human beings.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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
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To abstain completely from all enjoyments may be easy. Yet to enjoy life and retain spiritual integrity - there is the challenge.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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
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God is either of no importance, or of supreme importance.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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When religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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
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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.
Abraham Joshua Heschel