Martin Buber Quotes

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?'"

We can be redeemed only to the extent to which we see ourselves.

When I was young, I admired people who were clever. Now that I am old, I admire people who are kind.

To be old is a glorious thing when one has not unlearned what it means to begin, this old man had perhaps first learned it thoroughly in old age.

In the ice of solitude man becomes most inexorably a question to himself, and just because the question pitilessly summons and draws into play his most secret life he becomes an experience to himself.

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

Play is the exultation of the possible.

The I of the basic word I-Thou is different from that of the basic word I-It.

The doer cannot apprehend who the powers are whose emissary and acting agent he is; he must nevertheless be aware that the fullness of the world’s destiny, namelessly interwoven, passes through his hands. It is said in the Mishnah, “Every man shall say: ‘It is for me that the world was created.’ ”16 And again, “Every man shall say: ‘The world rests on me,’ ” which is corroborated by the hasidic text: “Yes, he is the only one in the world, and its continued existence depends on his deed.

Mundus vult decipi: the world wants to be deceived. The truth is too complex and frightening; the taste for the truth is an acquired taste that few acquire.

This, however, is the sublime melancholy of our lot that every You must become an It in our world.

One must, however, take care not to understand this conversation with God — the conversation of which I have to speak in this book and in almost all the works which followed — as something happening solely alongside or above the everyday. God's speech to men penetrates what happens in the life of each one of us, and all that happens in the world around us, biographical and historical, and makes it for you and me into instruction, message, demand. Happening upon happening, situation upon situation, are enabled and empowered by the personal speech of God to demand of the human person that he take his stand and make his decision. Often enough we think there is nothing to hear, but long before we have ourselves put wax in our ears.
(Postscript, October 1957)

There is a light over every person, and when two souls meet, their lights come together, and a single light emerges from them to feel the universal generation as a sea, and oneself as a wave in it.

Every morning I shall concern myself anew about the boundary Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No And pressing forward honor reality. We cannot avoid Using power, Cannot escape the compulsion To afflict the world, So let us, cautious in diction And mighty in contradiction, Love powerfully.

Whoever abhors the name and fancies that he is godless — when he addresses with his whole devoted being the Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other, he addresses God.