Martin Buber Quotes - Page 2

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

The historical religions have the tendency to become ends in themselves, and, as it were, to put themselves in God's place, and, in fact, there is nothing that is so apt to obscure God's face as a religion.

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

He who loves brings God and the World together.

To begin with oneself but not to end with onself. To start from oneself but not to aim at oneself.

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

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

When I meet a man, I am not concerned about his opinions. I am concerned about the man.

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

To be old can be glorious if one has not unlearned how to begin.

We can learn to be whole by saying what we mean and doing what we say.

In the beginning was the relationship.

God dwells wherever man lets Him in.

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).

We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

All actual life is encounter.

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

All journeys have secret destinations 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.