“Thought is not bred apart from experience or from inner surroundings.”

— Abraham Joshua Heschel

Source: Who Is Man? (1965), Ch. 5
Context: The sense of meaning is not born in ease and sloth. It comes after bitter trials, disappointments in the glitters, foundering, strandings. It is the marrow from the bone. There is no manna in our wilderness.
Thought is not bred apart from experience or from inner surroundings. Thinking is living, and no thought is bred in an isolated cell in the brain. No thought is an island.

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Abraham Joshua Heschel 130

Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi 1907–1972

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