“Essential to education for being human is to cultivate a sense for the inexpedient, to disclose the fallacy of absolute expediency.”

— Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5
Context: Essential to education for being human is to cultivate a sense for the inexpedient, to disclose the fallacy of absolute expediency. God's voice may sound feeble to our conscience. Yet there is a divine cunning in history which seems to prove that the wages of absolute expediency is disaster.
Happiness is not a synonym for self-satisfaction, complacency, or smugness. Self-satisfaction breeds futility and despair. Self-satisfaction is the opiate of fools.

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Abraham Joshua Heschel130

Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi 1907–1972

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