Martin Buber Quotes

86 Sourced Quotes

What is it that is eternal: the primal phenomenon, present in the here and now, of what we call revelation? It is man's emerging from the moment of the supreme encounter, being no longer the same as he was when entering into it.

Martin Buber
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.

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

Martin Buber
To produce is to draw forth, to invent is to find, to shape is to discover...

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

Martin Buber
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.

Martin Buber
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.

Martin Buber
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.

Martin Buber
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.

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

Martin Buber
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.

Martin Buber
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.

Martin Buber
We should also pray for the wicked among the peoples of the world; we should love them too.

Martin Buber
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.

Martin Buber
What has to be given up is not the I, as most mystics suppose: this I is indispensable for any relationship, including the highest, which always presupposes an I and You.

Martin Buber
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

Martin Buber
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.

Martin Buber
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.

Martin Buber
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.

Martin Buber
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.

Martin Buber
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.

Martin Buber
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.

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

Martin Buber
Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos.

Martin Buber
Life, in that it is life, necessarily entails justice.

Martin Buber
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.

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

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

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

Martin Buber
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.

Martin Buber