“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.”
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Martin Buber 58
German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian 1878–1965Related quotes

“Man is the "ethical animal" — ethical in potentiality even if, unfortunately, not in actuality.”
Source: Man’s Search for Himself (1953), p. 150
Context: Man is the "ethical animal" — ethical in potentiality even if, unfortunately, not in actuality. His capacity for ethical judgment — like freedom, reason and the other unique characteristics of the human being — is based upon his consciousness of himself.


“If a man has character, he has also his typical experience, which always recurs.”

“Every man is a potential genius until he does something.”
Page 110.
Beerbohm Tree (1956)

“Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all … is not to have one.”
Variant: Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all, in my view, is not to have one.
Source: Zorba the Greek

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)

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Golden Sayings of Epictetus
Variant: It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.