Quotes from Martin Buber

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

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

The perfection of any matter, the highest or the lowest, touches on the divine.

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

When we desire to lead men to God, we must not simply overthrow their idols. In each of these images we must seek to discover what divine quality he who carved it sought.

The great man, whether we comprehend him in the most intense activity of his work or in the restful equipoise of his forces, is powerful, involuntarily and composedly powerful, but he is not avid for power. What he is avid for is the realization of what he has in mind, the incarnation of the spirit.

Creation happens to us, burns itself into us, recasts us in burning -- we tremble and are faint, we submit. We take part in creation, meet the Creator, reach out to Him, helpers and companions.

The Thou encounters me by grace -- it cannot be found by seeking. But that I speak the basic word to it is a deed of my whole being, is my essential deed.

The human person, the human being, is not just an object among objects, not just a thing in the world. The human being is a being-in-the-world, a being-with-others, a being-for-others.

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.

Greatness by nature includes a power, but not a will to power.

So long as you "have" yourself, have yourself as an object, your experience of man is only as of a thing among things.

You do not attain to knowledge by remaining on the shore and watching the foaming waves, you must make the venture and cast yourself in, you must swim, alert and with all your force, even if a moment comes when you think you are losing consciousness.

All real life is meeting.

God made so many different kinds of people. Why would he allow only one way to serve him?

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.

God can be addressed, but not expressed.

As I actualize, I uncover.

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.

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

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.

Feeling one "has"; love occurs.

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.

Spirit is not in the I but between I and You.