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“The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

“I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

The Zookeeper's Wife (2008)
Context: I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas. This is to me the supreme Hasidic imperative: Don't be old. Don't be stale.

“"The gods are on the side of the stronger," according to Tacitus. The prophets proclaimed that the heart of God is on the side of the weaker. God's special concern is not for the mighty and the successful, but for the lowly and the downtrodden, for the stranger and the poor, for the widow and the orphan.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Volume 1, p. 167
The Prophets (1962)

“The riches of the soul are stored up in its memory. this is the test of character, not whether a man follows the daily fashion, but whether the past is alive in his present.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The Holy Dimension", p. 333
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

“The anchor of meaning resides in an abyss, deeper than the reach of despair. Yet the abyss is not not infinite; its bottom may suddenly be discovered within the confines of a human heart or under the debris of might doubts.
This may be the vocation of man: to say "Amen" to being and to the Author of being; to live in defiance of absurdity, notwithstanding futility and defeat; to attain faith in God even in spite of God.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 4

“One must forget many clichés in order to behold a single image. Insight is the beginning of perceptions to come rather than the extension of perceptions gone by. Conventional seeing, operating as it does with patterns and coherences, is a way of seeing the present in the past tense. Insight is an attempt to think in the present. … Insight is knowledge at first sight.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Introduction
The Prophets (1962)

“The stone is broken, but the words are alive.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

(2008)

“Much of what the Bible demands can be comprised in one imperative: Remember!”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The Holy Dimension", p. 334
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

“We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

As quoted in SQ : Connecting with Our Spiritual Intelligence (2000) by Danah Zohar and Ian Marshall, p. 15

“The search of reason ends at the shore of the known.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

(2008)

“He who has ever been confronted with the ultimate and has realized that sun and stars and souls do not ramble in a vacuum will keep his heart in readiness for the hour when the world is entranced, awaits a soul to breathe in the mystery that all things exhale in their craving for salvation. For things are not mute. The stillness is full of demands. Out of the world comes a behest to instill into the air a rapturous song for God, to incarnate in the stones a message of humble beauty, and to instill a prayer for goodness in the hearts of all children.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The Holy Dimension", p. 330
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

“In his great vision Isaiah perceives the voice of the seraphim even before he hears the voice of the Lord. What is it that the seraphim reveal? "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory."
Holy, holy, holy — indicate the transcendence and distance of God. The whole earth is full of His glory — the immanence or presence of God. The outwardness of the world communicates something of the indwelling greatness of God.
The glory is neither an aesthetic nor physical quality. It is sensed in grandeur, but it is more than grandeur. It is a presence or the effulgence of a presence.
The whole earth is full of His glory, but we do not perceive it; it is within our reach but beyond our grasp. And still it is not entirely unknown to us.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5<!-- The sense of the ineffable, p. 89 -->

“Why were so few voices raised in the ancient world in protest against the ruthlessness of man? Why are human beings so obsequious, ready to kill and ready to die at the call of kings and chieftains? Perhaps it is because they worship might, venerate those who command might, and are convinced that it is by force that man prevails. The splendor and the pride of kings blind the people.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The idolatry of might," Volume 1, p. 159
The Prophets (1962)

“All action is vicarious faith.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The Holy Dimension", p. 338
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

“The idea of dependence is an explanation, whereas self-sufficiency is an unprecedented, nonanalogous concept in terms of what we know about life within nature. Is not self-sufficiency itself insufficient to explain self-sufficiency?”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5

“It is an act of evil to accept the state of evil as either inevitable or final.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Volume 1, p. 181
The Prophets (1962)

“Only straight discovering in the nearest stone or tree, sound or thought, the shelter of His often desecrated goodness, the treasury of His waiting form man's heart to affiliate with His will — this is the rapture of faith. It is an echo to a pleading voice, a reply to the inconceivable in all beauty.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The Holy Dimension", p. 331
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)

“There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Prologue p. 3
The Sabbath (1951)