Martin Buber was a German philosopher, religious thinker, and political activist. He is 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. His work has had a profound impact on religious, social, and political thought in the twentieth century.
What is the most famous quote by Martin Buber ?
When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.
— Martin Buber
What can you learn from Martin Buber (Life Lessons)
- Martin Buber taught that the most important thing in life is to have meaningful relationships and to treat others with respect and kindness.
- He argued that the only way to truly understand the world is to enter into genuine dialogue with others.
- He believed that by recognizing the humanity in others, we can learn to appreciate the differences between us and develop a deeper understanding of the world.
The most successful Martin Buber quotes that are free to learn and impress others
Following is a list of the best Martin Buber quotes, including various Martin Buber inspirational quotes, and other famous sayings by Martin Buber.
The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda.
When people come to you for help, do not turn them off with pious words, saying, 'Have faith and take your troubles to God.' Act instead as though there were no God, as though there were only one person in the world who could help -- only yourself.
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
In spite of all similarities, every living situation has, like a newborn child, a new face, that has never been before and will never come again. It demands of you a reaction that cannot be prepared beforehand. It demands nothing of what is past. It demands presence, responsibility; it demands you.
Solitude is the place of purification.
Every person born in this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique.
The true meaning of love one's neighbor is not that it is a command from God which we are to fulfill, but that through it and in it we meet God.
An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.
Dialogue quotes by Martin Buber
Every morning, I shall concern myself anew about the boundary, Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No, And pressing forward honor reality. We cannot avoid, Using power, Cannot escape the compulsion, To afflict the world, So let us, cautious in diction, And mighty in contradiction, Love powerfully.
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.
God made so many different kinds of people; why would God allow only one way to worship?
When a man has made peace within himself, he will be able to make peace in the whole world.
I don't like religion much, and I am glad that in the Bible the word is not to be found.
There is no room for God in him who is full of himself.
Every person born into the world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique....If there had been someone like her in the world, there would have been no need for her to be born." --Martin Buber as quoted in Narrative Means for Sober Ends, by Jon Diamond, p.78
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
Quotations by Martin Buber that are existentialism and humanism
Every man's foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, and be it even the greatest, has already achieved.
If you want to raise a man from mud and filth, do not think it is enough to stay on top and reach a helping hand down to him. You must go all the way down yourself, down into mud and filth. Then take hold of him with strong hands and pull him and yourself out into the light.
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.
What has to be given up is not the I, but that drive for self-affirmation which impels man to flee from the unreliable, unsolid, unlasting, unpredictable, dangerous world of relation into the having of things.
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.
Let us, cautious in diction, And mighty in contradiction, Love powerfully.
Before his death, Rabbi Zusya said "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: 'Why were you not Zusya?
Mundus vult decipi: the world wants to be deceived.
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.
This is the eternal origin of art that a human being confronts a form that wants to become a work through him. Not a figment of his soul but something that appears to the soul and demands the soul's creative power. What is required is a deed that a man does with his whole being.
What you must do is love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no one who knows your many faults better than you! But you love yourself notwithstanding. And so you must love your neighbor, no matter how many faults you see in him.
I have to tell it again and again: I have no doctrine.
I only point out something. I point out reality, I point out something in reality which has not or too little been seen. I take him who listens to me at his hand and lead him to the window. I push open the window and point outside. I have no doctrine, I carry on a dialogue.
We may listen to our inner self-and still not know which ocean we hear roaring.
All actual life is encounter.
Everything is full of sacramental substance, everything. Each thing and each function is ever ready to light up into a sacrament.
Power abdicates only under the stress of counter-power.
I shall teach you the best way to say Torah. You must cease to be aware of yourselves. You must be nothing but an ear that hears what the universe of the word is constantly saying within you. The moment you start hearing what you yourself are saying, YOU must stop.
Meet the world with the fullness of your being, and you shall meet God. Of you wish to believe, love.
We cannot avoid using power, cannot escape the compulsion to aflict the world so let us, cautious in diction and mighty in contradiction, love powerfully.
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).
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.
The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.
Inscrutably involved, we live in the currents of universal reciprocity.
Play is the exultation of the possible.
No limits are set to the ascent of man, and to each and everyone the highest stands open. Here it is only your personal choice that decides.
Leisure is the exultation of the possible.
This is the sacrifice: the endless possibility that is offered up on the altar of the form.
It pains me to speak of God in the third person.
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.
One must be truly able to say I in order to know the mystery of the Thou in its whole truth.
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.
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.
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.