Martin Buber Quotes

— 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.

What is manifold is often frightening because it is not neat and simple. Men prefer to forget how many possibilities are open to them.

Trust, trust in the world, because this human being exists - that is the most inward achievement of the relation in education. Because this human being exists, meaninglessness, however hard pressed you are by it, cannot be the real truth. Because this human being exists, in the darkness the light lies hidden, in fear salvation, and in the callousness of one's fellow-men the great Love.

Marriage, for instance, will never be given new life except by that out of which true marriage always arises, the revealing by two people of the Thou to one another. Out of this a marriage is built up by the Thou that is neither of the I’s. This is the metaphysical and metapsychical factor of love to which feelings of love are mere accompaniments.

Creation does not merely take place once in the beginning but also at every moment throughout the whole of time.

True beings are lived in the present, the life of objects is lived in the past.

For Judaism, God is not a Kantian idea but an elementally present spiritual reality — neither something conceived by pure reason nor something postulated by practical reason, but emanating from the immediacy of existence as such, which religious man steadfastly confronts and nonreligious man evades.

If a man wishes to guide the people in his house the right way, he must not grow angry at them. For anger does not only make one’s soul impure; it transfers impurity to the souls of those with whom one is angry.

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.

Whoever says You does not have something; he has nothing. But he stands in relation.

I do not rest on the broad upland of a system that includes a series of sure statements about the absolutes, but on a narrow, rocky ridge between the gulfs where there is no sureness of expressible knowledge but [only] the certainty of meeting what remains, undisclosed.

That I discovered the deed that intends me, that, this movement of my freedom, reveals the mystery to me. But this, too, that I cannot accomplish it the way I intended it, this resistance also reveals the mystery to me. He that forgets all being caused as he decides from the depths, he that puts aside possessions and cloak and steps bare before the countenance — this free human being encounters fate as the counter-image of his freedom. It is not his limit but his completion; freedom and fate embrace each other to form meaning; and given meaning, fate — with its eyes, hitherto severe, suddenly full of light — looks like grace itself.

It was from Buber’s other writings that I learned what could also be found in I and Thou: the central commandment to make the secular sacred.

The most beautiful life that has been imagined is the life of the knight Don Quixote who created danger where he did not find it. But more beautiful still is the lived life of him who finds danger in all places. All creation stands on the edge of being; all creation is risk. He who does not risk his soul can only ape the creator.

The basic word I-You can only be spoken with one’s whole being. The basic word I-It can never be spoken with one’s whole being.