Quotes from Joseph B. Soloveitchik

I will speak that I may find relief"; for there is a redemptive quality for an agitated mind in the spoken word, and a tormented soul finds peace in confessing.

Who knows what kind of loneliness is more agonizing: the one which befalls man when he casts his glance at the mute cosmos, at its dark spaces and monotonous drama, or the one that besets man exchanging glances with his fellow man in silence?

The student of Torah is like the amnesia victim who tries to reconstruct from fragments the beautiful world he once experienced. By learning Torah, man returns to his own self.

The Biblical account of the original sin is the story of man of faith who realizes suddenly that faith can be utilized for the acquisition of majesty and glory and who, instead of fostering a covenantal community, prefers to organize a political utilitarian community exploiting the sincerity and unqualified commitment of the crowd for non-covenantal, worldly purposes. The history of organized religion is replete with instances of desecration of the covenant.

The efficacy of prayer consists in a cognitive-spiritual catharsis, which purifies man of the most hideous untruth and deception, namely, the pretension that he belongs to himself and that he is his own lord.