Quotes from Abraham Joshua Heschel

To employ words is not the same as to understand what they mean. Moreover, the relation between words and their meanings is elastic. Words remain, while meanings are subject to change.

In moments of great crisis they all fail—priests, philosophers, scientists—the prophets alone prevail.

We often feel how poor the edifice would be were it built exclusively of our rituals and deeds which are so awkward and often so obtrusive. How else express glory in the presence of eternity, if not by the silence of abstaining from noisy acts?

It is, indeed, a unique occasion at which the distinguished word qadosh is used for the first time: in the Book of Genesis at the end of the story of creation. How extremely significant is the fact that it is applied to time: "And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy." There is no reference in the record of creation to any object in space that would be endowed with the quality of holiness.

There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious.

Standing face to face with the world, we often sense a spirit which surpasses our ability to comprehend. The world is too much for us. It is crammed with marvel. The glory is not an exception but an aura that lies about all being, a spiritual setting of reality.

Above all it never ceases to proclaim that worship of God without justice to man is an abomination; that while man's problem is God, God's problem is man.

To most of us a person, a human being, seems to be a maximum of being, the ceiling of reality; we think that to personify is to glorify. Yet do not some of us realize at times that a person is no superlative, that to personify the spiritually real is to belittle it? A personification may be both a distortion and a depreciation.

Our future depends upon our appreciation of the reality of the inner life, of the splendor of thought, of the dignity of wonder and reverence. This is the most important thought: God has a stake in the life of man, of every man. But this idea cannot be imposed from without; it must be discovered by every man; it cannot be preached, it must be experienced.

philosophy of religion comes into being when both religion and philosophy claim to offer ideas about ultimate problems.

He who wishes to ponder what is beyond the Bible must first learn to be sensitive to what is within the Bible.

Philosophy of religion is involved in a polarity; like an ellipse it revolves around two foci: philosophy and religion.