Quotes from Martin Buber

Play is the exultation of the possible.

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

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.

In the beginning was the relationship.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The world is not divine sport, it is divine destiny. There is a divine meaning of the world, of man, of human persons, of you and me.

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.

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

You should carefully observe the way toward which your heart draws you, then choose this way with all your strength.

Power abdicates only under the stress of counter-power.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Through the Thou a person becomes I.

The work produced is a thing among things, able to be experienced and described as a sum of qualities. But from time to time it can face the receptive beholder in its whole embodied form.