Quote

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.

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
Power
Animal
Merit
Gigantic
Needs
Taken
Boxes
Stewardship
Men
Age
Environmental
Usefulness
World
Purpose
Satisfaction
Attainment
Making
Indeed
Primarily
Nature
Tools
Chief
Thought
Resources
Chiefs
Become
Creation
Tool
Utilization

More quotes by Abraham Joshua Heschel

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Wise criticism always begins with self-criticism.
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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 test of love is in how one relates not to saints and scholars but to rascals.
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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To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of the mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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We do not step out of the world when we pray we merely see the world in a different setting. The self is not the hub but the spoke of the revolving wheel. It is precisely the function of prayer to shift the center of living from self-consciousness to self-surrender.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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I did not ask for success I asked for wonder.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Much of what the Bible demands can be comprised in one imperative: Remember!
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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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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
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Speech has power. Words do not fade. What starts out as a sound, ends in a deed.
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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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
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I would say about individuals, A Individual dies when they cease to to be surprised. I am surprised every morning when I see the sunshine again. When I see an act of evil I don't accomodate, I don't accomodate myself to the violence that goes on everywhere. I am still so surprised! That is why I am against it. We must learn to be surprised.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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All action is vicarious faith.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Self-respect is the fruit of discipline.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Man is a messenger who forgot the message.
Abraham Joshua Heschel