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Self-sufficiency, independence, the capacity to stand apart, to differ, to resist, and to defy-all are modes of being human.

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
Independence
Apart
Capacity
Stand
Modes
Human
Defy
Humans
Sufficiency
Self
Differ
Resist

More quotes by Abraham Joshua Heschel

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Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder. Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of your universe. Each day enrapture me with your marvelous things without number. ...I do not ask to see the reason for it all: I ask only to share the wonder of it all.
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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When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendors of the past when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain 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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There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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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Every little deed counts.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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A soul can create only when alone.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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The degree to which one is sensitive to other people's suffering, to other (people's) humanity, is the index of one's own humanity
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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The Sabbath is not for the sake of the weekdays the weekdays are for the sake of Sabbath. It is not an interlude but the climax of living.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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It is not enough for me to ask question I want to know how to answer the one question that seems to encompass everything I face: What am I here for?
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious. Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year.
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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Man's sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man's attitude toward history and nature.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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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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Wise criticism always begins with self-criticism.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Only those will apprehend religion who can probe its depth, who can combine intuition and love with the rigor of method
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