Martin Buber Quotes

Alles wirkliche Leben ist Begegnung.

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.

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

In the presence of God himself man stands always like a solitary tree in the wilderness.

Through the Thou a person becomes I.

The great man, whether we comprehend him in the most intense activity of his work or in the restful equipoise of his forces, is powerful, involuntarily and composedly powerful, but he is not avid for power. What he is avid for is the realization of what he has in mind, the incarnation of the spirit.

No purpose intervenes between I and You, no greed and no anticipation; and longing itself is changed as it plunges from the dream into appearance. Every means is an obstacle. Only where all means have disintegrated encounters occur.

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.

Because we cannot circle above all existence – sleepless, unbroken, boundless, glowing – we content ourselves with being submerged and awakening .

On a higher level we find fictions that men eagerly believe, regardless of the evidence, because they gratify some wish.

Greatness by nature includes a power, but not a will to power.

A great relationship ... breaches the barriers of a lofty solitude, subdues its strict law, and throws a bridge from self-being to self-being across the abyss of dread of the universe.

To win a truly great life for the people of Israel, a great peace is necessary, not a fictitious peace, the dwarfish peace that is no more than a feeble intermission, but a true peace with the neighboring peoples, which alone can render possible a common development of this portion of the earth as the vanguard of the awakening Near East.

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?

That you need God more than anything, you know at all times in your heart. But don’t you know also that God needs you — in the fullness of his eternity, you? How would man exist if God did not need him, and how would you exist? You need God in order to be, and God needs you — for that which is the meaning of your life.