Quotes from Martin Buber

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.

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

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

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

To look away from the world, or to stare at it, does not help a man to reach God; but he who sees the world in Him stands in His presence.

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

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

All actual life is encounter.

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

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

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

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.

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).

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

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

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

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

Creation is not a hurdle on the road to God, it is the road itself.

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.

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

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.

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

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.