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In a controversy, the instant we feel anger, we have already ceased striving for truth and have begun striving for ourselves.
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
Strive
Ceased
Anger
Controversy
Already
Striving
Truth
Begun
Feel
Buddhist
Feels
Enlightenment
Instant
Buddhism
More quotes by Abraham Joshua Heschel
The tragedy of religion is partly due to its isolation from life, as if God could be segregated.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
A soul can create only when alone.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
All events are secretly interrelated the sweep of all we are doing reaches beyond the horizon of our comprehension.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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
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
Awareness of the divine begins with wonder.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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
...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
We forfeit the right to worship God as long as we continue to humiliate negroes. ... The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
The essence of man is not what he is, but in what he is able to be.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
All action is vicarious faith.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
You must build your life as if it were a work of art.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
How embarrassing for man to be the greatest miracle on earth and not to understand it!
Abraham Joshua Heschel
God is either of no importance, or of supreme importance.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
(People) can never attain fulfillment, or sense of meaning, unless it is shared, unless it pertains to other human beings.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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
Normal consciousness is a state of stupor, in which the sensibility to the wholly real and responsiveness to the stimuli of the spirit are reduced. The mystics, knowing that man is involved in a hidden history of the cosmos, endeavor to awake from the drowsiness and apathy and to regain the state of wakefulness for their enchanted souls.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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?
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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
