Martin Buber Quotes

The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda.

Love is responsibility of an I for a You: in this consists what cannot consist in any feeling - the equality of all lovers..

But when a man draws a lifeless thing into his passionate longing for dialogue, lending it independence and as it were a soul, then there may dawn in him the presentiment of a world-wide dialogue with the world-happening that steps up to him even in his environment, which consists partially of things. Or do you seriously think that the giving and taking of signs halts on the threshold of that business where an honest and open spirit is found?

The Two Caps Rabbi David Moshe, the son of the rabbi of Rizhyn, once said to a hasid: “You knew my father when he lived in Sadagora and was already wearing the black cap and going his way in dejection; but you did not see him when he lived in Rizhyn and was still wearing his golden cap.” The hasid was astonished. “How is it possible that the holy man from Rizhyn ever went his way in dejection! Did not I myself hear him say that dejection is the lowest condition!” “And after he had reached the summit,” Rabbi David replied, “he had to descend to that condition time and again in order to redeem the souls which had sunk down to it.

The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.

You can rake the muck this way, rake the muck that way — it will always be muck. Have I sinned or have I not sinned? In the time I am brooding over it, I could be stringing pearls for the delight of Heaven

"We say 'far away'; the Zulu has for that a word which means, in our sentence form, 'There where someone cries out: "Oh mother, I am lost." ' The Fuegian soars above our analytic wisdom with a seven-syllabled word whose precise meaning is, 'They stare at one another, each waiting for the other to volunteer to do what both wish, but are not able to do."

All real life is meeting.

The world is not divine sport; it is divine destiny. There is divine meaning in the life of the world; of man, of human persons, of you and of me.

Alles wirkliche Leben ist Begegnung.

I contemplate a tree.
I can accept it as a picture: a rigid pillar in a flood of light, or splashes of green traversed by the gentleness of the blue silver ground.
I can feel it as movement: the flowing veins around the sturdy, striving core, the suckling of the roots, the breathing of the leaves, the infinite commerce with earth and air - and the growing itself in its darkness.

Before his death, Rabbi Zusya said, "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: 'Why were you not Zusya?'"

Some would deny any legitimate use of the word God because it has been misused so much. Certainly it is the most burdened of all human words. Precisely for that reason it is the most imperishable and unavoidable. And how much weight has all erroneous talk about God's nature and works (although there never has been nor can be any such talk that is not erroneous) compared with the one truth that all men who have addressed God really meant him? For whoever pronounces the word God and really means Thou, addresses, no matter what his delusion, the true Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other and to whom he stands in a relationship that includes all others.

— What, then, does one experience of the You? — Nothing at all. For one does not experience it. — What, then, does one know of the You? — Only everything. For one no longer knows particulars.

I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human face looking at me