Martin Buber quotes:

Solitude is the place of purification.

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.

The true meaning of love one's neighbor is not that it is a command from God which we are to fulfill, but that through it and in it we meet God.

God wants man to fulfill his commands as a human being and with the quality peculiar to human beings.

The law is not thrust upon man; it rests deep within him, to waken when the call comes.

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

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

For sin is just this, what man cannot by its very nature do with his whole being; it is possible to silence the conflict in the soul, but it is not possible to uproot it.

A person cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human. To become human, is what this individual person, has been created for.

Dialogic is not to be identified with love. But love without dialogic, without real outgoing to the other, reaching to the other, the love remaining with itself - this is called Lucifer.

When a man has made peace within himself, he will be able to make peace in the whole world.

An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.

God made so many different kinds of people; why would God allow only one way to worship?

This is the sacrifice: the endless possibility that is offered up on the altar of the form...

Eclipse of the light of heaven, eclipse of God - such indeed is the character of the historic hour through which the world is now passing

The perpetual enemy of faith in the true God is not atheism (the claim that there is no God), but rather Gnosticism (the claim that God is known).

Read the Bible as though it were something entirely unfamiliar, as though it had not been set before you ready-made. Face the book with a new attitude as something new.

The ones who count are those persons who - though they may be of little renown - respond to and are responsible for the continuation of the living spirit.

the fact that every people feel itself threatened by the others gives the state it's definite unifying powers; it depends upon the instinct of self-preservation of society itself; the latent external crisis enables it to get the upper hand in internal crises

Let us, cautious in diction And mighty in contradiction, Love powerfully.

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.

Religion means goal and way, politics implies end and means. The political end is recognizable by the fact that it may be attained--in success--and its attainment is historically recorded. The religious goal remains, even in man's highest experiences, that which simply provides direction on the mortal way; it never enters into historical consummation.

This is the eternal origin of art that a human being confronts a form that wants to become a work through him. Not a figment of his soul but something that appears to the soul and demands the soul's creative power. What is required is a deed that a man does with his whole being..

Creation happens to us, burns into us, changes us, we tremble and swoon, we submit. Creation - we participate in it, we encounter the creator, offer ourselves to him, helpers and companions.

If you want to raise a man from mud and filth, do not think it is enough to stay on top and reach a helping hand down to him. You must go all the way down yourself, down into mud and filth. Then take hold of him with strong hands and pull him and yourself out into the light.

There is no room for God in him who is full of himself.

I have to tell it again and again: I have no doctrine. I only point out something. I point out reality, I point out something in reality which has not or too little been seen. I take him who listens to me at his hand and lead him to the window. I push open the window and point outside. I have no doctrine, I carry on a dialogue.

What you must do is love your neighbor as yourself. There is no one who knows your many faults better than you! But you love yourself notwithstanding. And so you must love your neighbor, no matter how many faults you see in him.

Inscrutably involved, we live in the currents of universal reciprocity."

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

What has to be given up is not the I, but that drive for self-affirmation which impels man to flee from the unreliable, unsolid, unlasting, unpredictable, dangerous world of relation into the having of things.

It pains me to speak of God in the third person.

I shall teach you the best way to say Torah. You must cease to be aware of yourselves. You must be nothing but an ear that hears what the universe of the word is constantly saying within you. The moment you start hearing what you yourself are saying, YOU must stop.

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

Power abdicates only under stress of counter-power.

When a man grows aware of a new way in which to serve God, he should carry it around with him secretly, and without uttering it, for nine months, as though he were pregnant with it, and let others know of it only at the end of that time, as though it were a birth.

The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.

There are three principles in a man's being and life, the principle of thought, the principle of speech, and the principle of action. The origin of all conflict between me and my fellow-men is that I do not say what I mean and I don't do what I say.

A human being becomes whole not in virtue of a relation to himself [only] but rather in virtue of an authentic relation to another human being(s).

A story must be told in such a way that it constitutes help in itself. My grandfather was lame. Once they asked him to tell a story about his teacher. And he related how his teacher used to hop and dance while he prayed. My grandfather rose as he spoke, and he was so swept away by his story that he began to hop and dance to show how the master had done. From that hour he was cured of his lameness. That's how to tell a story.

About what mainly constituted what you ask, it was something other. It was just a certain inclination to meet people. And as far as possible, to change something in the other, but also to let me be changed by him. At any event, I had no resistance, I put no resistance to it. I already began as a young man. I felt I have not the right to want to change another if I am not open to be changed by him as far as it is legitimate.

All actual life is encounter.

All names of God remain hallowed because they have been used not only to speak of God but also to speak to him.

All real living is meeting.

And if there were a devil it would not be one who decided against God, but one who, in eternity, came to no decision.

As I actualize, I uncover.

As long as the firmament of the You is spread over me, the tempests of causality cower at my heels, and whirl of doom congeals.

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?

But it can also happen, if will and grace are joined, that as I contemplate the tree I am drawn into a relation, and the tree ceases to be an It. . . . Does the tree then have consciousness, similar to our own? I have no experience of that. But thinking that you have brought this off in your own case, must you again divide the indivisible? What I encounter is neither the soul of a tree nor a dryad, but the tree itself.

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?

Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos.Persons appear byentering into relationwith other persons.

Every journey has a secret destination of which the traveller is unaware.

Every man's foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, and be it even the greatest, has already achieved.

Every person born in this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique.

Every person born into the world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique....If there had been someone like her in the world, there would have been no need for her to be born." --Martin Buber as quoted in Narrative Means for Sober Ends, by Jon Diamond, p.78

Everyone has in him something precious that is in no one else.

Everyone must come out of his Exile in his own way.

Everything depends on inner change; when this has taken place, then, and only then does the world change.

Everything is full of sacramental substance, everything. Each thing and each function is ever ready to light up into a sacrament.

Feeling one "has"; love occurs.

Feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love. That is no metaphor, but the actual truth. Love does not cling to the I in such a way as to have the Thou only for its " content," its object; but love is between I and Thou. The man who does not know this, with his very being know this, does not know love; even though he ascribes to it the feelings he lives through, experiences, enjoys, and expresses.

For sin is just this, what man cannot by its very nature do with his whole being; it is possible to silence the conflict in the soul, but it is not possible to uproot it

Freedom and destiny are solemnly promised to one another and linked together in meaning.

From my youth onwards I have found in Jesus my great brother. That Christianity has regarded and does regard him as God and Savior has always appeared to me a fact of the highest importance which, for his sake and my own, I must endeavor to understand . . . I am more than ever certain that a great place belongs to him in Israel's history of faith and that this place cannot be described by any of the usual categories.

God cannot be seen, but He can listened to and spoken to!

God dwells wherever man lets Him in.

God is the "mysterium tremendum," that appears and overthrows, but he is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I.

God said to Abraham: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee." God says to man: "First, get you out of your country, that means the dimness you have inflicted on yourself. Then out of your birthplace, that means out of the dimness your mother inflicted on you. After that, out of the house of your father, that means out of the dimness your father inflicted on you. Only then will you be able to go to the land that I will show you"

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

He who desires to become aware of the hidden light must lift the feeling of fear up to its source. And he can accomplish this if he judges himself and all he does. For then he sheds all fears and lifts fear that has fallen down. But if he does not judge himself, he will be judged from on high, and this judgment will come upon him in the guise of countless things, and all the things in the world will become messengers of God who carry out the judgment on this man.

He who loves brings God and the World together.

Here is the infallible test. Imagine yourself in a situation where you are alone, wholly alone on earth, and you are offered one of the two, books or men. I often hear men prizing their solitude but that is only because there are still men somewhere on earth even though in the far distance. I knew nothing of books when I came forth from the womb of my mother, and I shall die without books, with another human hand in my own. 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 being looking at me.

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 is the meaning of your life.

Human life and humanity come into being in genuine encounters. The hope for this hour depends upon the renewal of the immediacy of dialogue among human beings.

I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man's life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.

I don't like religion much, and I am glad that in the Bible the word is not to be found.

I have learned a new form of service from the wars of Frederick, king of Prussia. It is not necessary to approach the enemy in order to attack him. In fleeing from him, it is possible to circumvent him as he advances and fall on him from the rear and force him to surrender. What is needed is not to strike straight at evil but to withdraw to the sources of divine power, and from there to circle around evil, bend it and transform it into its opposite.

I think no human being can give more than this. Making life possible for the other, if only for a moment.

If a person kills a tree before its time, it is like having murdered a soul.-Rabbi Nachman

If we had the power over the ends of the earth, it would not give us that fulfillment of existence which a quiet devoted relationship to nearby life can give us.

I'm not sure I can take your advice. You are dealing with English Gentlemen. We are dealing with monsters.

In philosophical anthropology, ... where the subject is man in his wholeness, the investigator cannot content himself, as in anthropology as an individual science, with considering man as another part of nature and with ignoring the fact that he, the investigator, is himself a man and experiences this humanity in his inner experience in a way that he simply cannot experience any part of nature.

In spite of all similarities, every living situation has, like a newborn child, a new face, that has never been before and will never come again. It demands of you a reaction that cannot be prepared beforehand. It demands nothing of what is past. It demands presence, responsibility; it demands you.

In the beginning was the relationship.

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.

In the story of the Creation we read: ". . . And behold, it was very good." But, in the passage where Moses reproves Israel, the verse says: "See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil." Where did the evil come from? Evil too is good. It is the lowest rung of perfect goodness. If you do good deeds, even evil will become good; but if you sin, evil will really become evil.

Inscrutably involved, we live in the currents of universal reciprocity.

It is not the nature of the task, but its consecration, that is the vital thing.

It is usual to think of good and evil as two poles, two opposite directions, the antithesis of one another...We must begin by doing away with this convention.

Jedes geeinzelte Du ist ein Durchblick zu ihm. Durch jedes geeinzelte Du spricht das Grundwort das Ewige an. Every particularThou is a glimpse through to the eternal Thou; by means of every particularThou the primary word addresses the eternal Thou. 164

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

Man is like a tree. If you stand in front of a tree and watch it incessantly, to see how it grows, and to see how much it has grown, you will see nothing at all. But tend it at all times, prune the runners and keep it free of beetles and worms, and all in good time-it will come into its growth. It is the same with man: all that is necessary is for him to overcome his obstacles, and he will thrive and grow. But it is not right to examine him hour after hour to see how much has already been added to his stature.

Man wishes to be confirmed in his being by man, and wishes to have a presence in the being of the other"¦. Secretly and bashfully he watches for a YES which allows him to be and which can come to him only from one human person to another.

Meet the world with the fullness of your being, and you shall meet God. Of you wish to believe, love.

Mundus vult decipi: the world wants to be deceived.

No limits are set to the ascent of man, and to each and everyone the highest stands open. Here it is only your personal choice that decides.

Nothing can doom man but the belief in doom, for this prevents the movement of return.

Nothing so tends to mask the face of God as religion; it can be a substitute for God himself.

One cannot in the nature of things expect a little tree that has been turned into a club to put forth leaves.

One must be truly able to say I in order to know the mystery of the Thou in its whole truth.

One need ask only 'What for? What am I to unify my being for?' The reply is: Not for my own sake.

One should hallow all that one does in one's natural life. One eats in holiness, tastes the taste of food in holiness, and the table becomes an altar. One works in holiness, and raises up the sparks which hide themselves in all tools. One walks in holiness across the fields, and the soft songs of all herbs, which they voice to God, enter into the song of our soul.

One who truly meets the world goes out also to God.

Only men who are capable of saying Thou [an attitude of deep respect] to one another can truly say we with one another.

Our relationships live in the space between us which is sacred.

Persons appear by entering into relation to other persons.

Play is the exultation of the possible.

Real faith means holding ourselves open to the unconditional mystery which we encounter in every sphere of our life and which cannot be comprised in any formula. Real faith means the ability to endure life in the face of this mystery.

Since the primary motive of the evil is disguise, one of the places evil people are most likely to be found is within the church. What better way to conceal one's evil from oneself, as well as from others, than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture? ... I do not mean to imply that the evil are anything other than a small minority among the religious or that the religious motives of most people are in any way spurious. I mean only that evil people tend to gravitate toward piety for the disguise and concealment it can offer them.

So long as you "have" yourself, have yourself as an object, your experience of man is only as of a thing among things.

The basic word I-Thou can be spoken only with one's whole being. The concentration and fusion into a whole being can never be accomplished by me, can never be accomplished without me. I require a Thou to become; becoming I, I say Thou.

The biblical passage which says of Abraham and the three visiting angels: "And He stood over them under the tree and they did eat" is interpreted by Rabbi Zusya to the effect that man stands above the angels, because he knows something unknown to them, namely, that eating may be hallowed by the eater's intention.... Any natural act, if hallowed, leads to God, and nature needs man for what no angel can perform on it, namely, its hallowing.

The concept of guilt is found most powerfully developed even in the most primitive communal forms which we know: ... the man is guilty who violates one of the original laws which dominate the society and which are mostly derived from a divine founder; the boy who is accepted into the tribal community and learns its laws, which bind him thenceforth, learns to promise; this promise is often given under the sign of death, which is symbolically carried out on the boy, with a symbolical rebirth.

The future stands in need of you in order to be born.

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

The perfection of any matter, the highest or the lowest, touches on the divine.

The philosophical anthropologist ... can know the wholeness of the person and through it the wholeness of man only when he does not leave his subjectivity out and does not remain an untouched observer.

The prophet is appointed to oppose the kind, and even more: history.

The salvation of man does not lie in his holding himself far removed from the worldly, but in consecrating it to holy, to divine meaning.

The tradition of the camp fire faces that of the pyramid.