Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Martin Buber Quotes

( Martin Buber (February 8, 1878 – June 13, 1965) was an Jewish philosopher and writer best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship. 'I and Thou', is Martin Buber's best known work )
  1. Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos.
     
  2. Persons appear by entering into relation to other persons.
     
  3. An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.
     
  4. You must yourself begin. Existence will remain meaningless for you if you yourself do not penetrate into it with active love and if you do not in this way discover its meaning for yourself… . Meet the world with the fullness of your being, and you shall meet God…. If you wish to believe, love.
     
  5. All means are impediment. Only where all means fall to pieces, encounter happens.
     
  6. The world is not divine sport, it is divine destiny. There is divine meaning in the life of the world, of man, of human persons, of you and of me.
     
  7. Men do not find God if they stay in the world. They do not find him if they leave the world. He who goes out with his whole being to meet his Thou, and carries to it all being that is in the world, finds him who cannot be sought.
     
  8. 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; in this way, and in no other, do you reach anthropological insight.
     
  9. The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda.
     
  10. 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.
     
  11. I perceive something. I feel something. I imagine something. I want something. I sense something. I think something. The life of a human being does not consist merely of all this and its like.
     
  12. Love is responsibility of an I for a You: in this consists what cannot consist in any feeling - the equality of all lovers.
     
  13. Every Thou in the world is by its nature fated to become a thing, or continually re-enter into the condition of things. In objective speech it would be said that every thing in the world, either before or after becoming a thing, is able to appear to an I as its Thou. But objective speech snatches only at a fringe of real life.
     
  14. Basic words are spoken with one’s being.
     
  15. I become through my relation to the Thou; as I become I, I say Thou.
     
  16. All real living is meeting.

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