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Philosophy, to be relevant, must offer us a wisdom to live by.

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
Wisdom
Live
Must
Relevant
Offer
Offers
Philosophy

More quotes by Abraham Joshua Heschel

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We must first peer into the darkness, feel strangled and entombed in the hopelessness of living without God, before we are ready to feel the presence of His living light.
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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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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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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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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It is gratefulness which makes the soul great.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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A prophet's true greatness is his ability to hold God and man in a single thought.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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There is no specialized art of prayer. All of life must be a training to pray. We pray the way we live.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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
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Then comes the insight that All is God. One still realizes that the world is as it was, but it does not matter, it does not affect one's faith.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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
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feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal
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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Things, when magnified, are forgeries of happiness.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith.
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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Philosophy may be defined as the art of asking the right question...awareness of the problem outlives all solutions. The answers are questions in disguise, every new answer giving rise to new questions.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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There is a built-in sense of indebtedness in the consciousness of man, an awareness of owing gratitude, or being caled upon at certain moments to reciprocate, to answer, to live in a way which is compatible with the grandeur and mystery of living.
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