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In any free society where terrible wrongs exist, some are guilty - all are responsible.

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
Free
Wrongs
Guilty
Responsible
Exist
Terrible
Society

More quotes by 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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Man is a messenger who forgot the message.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Faith opens our hearts for the entrance of the holy. It is almost as though God were thinking for us.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, or mend a broken bridge, or rebuild a ruined city but prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, and rebuild a weakened will.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information but only for want of appreciation.
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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Things, when magnified, are forgeries of happiness.
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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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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New insight begins when satisfaction comes to an end, when all that has been seen, said, or done looks like a distortion. ... Man's true fulfillment depends on communion with that which transcends him.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Understanding God is not attained by calling into session all arguments for and against Him, in order to debate whether He is a reality or a figment of the mind. God cannot be sensed as a second thought, as an explanation of the origin of the universe. He is either the first and the last, or just another concept.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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To sing means to sense and to affirm that the spirit is real and that its glory is present.
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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To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Human being is both being in the world and living in the world. Living involves responsible understanding of one's role in relation to all other beings. For living is not being in itself, but living of the world, affecting, exploiting, consuming, comprehending, deriving, depriving.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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Ultimately there is no power to narcissistic, self-indulgent thinking. Authentic thinking originates with an encounter with the world.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
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To pray is to dream in league with God, to envision His holy visions.
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