quotes by Abraham Joshua Heschel

"When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.
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— Abraham Joshua Heschel

""Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ....get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.""
— Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge."
— Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith."
— Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Never once in my life did I ask God for success or wisdom or power or fame. I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me."
— Abraham Joshua Heschel

"A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair."
— Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy."
— Abraham Joshua Heschel

"A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture."
— Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Faith is not the clinging to a shrine but an endless pilgrimage of the heart."
— Abraham Joshua Heschel

"When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people; as I grow older, I admire kind people."
— Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The problem to be faced is: how to combine loyalty to one's own tradition with reverence for different traditions."
— Abraham Joshua Heschel

"When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people."
— Abraham Joshua Heschel

"Only those will apprehend religion who can probe its depth, who can combine intuition and love with the rigor of method"
— Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living."
— Abraham Joshua Heschel

""I would say about individuals, A Individual dies when they cease to to be surprised. I am surprised every morning when I see the sunshine again. When I see an act of evil I don't accomodate, I don't accomodate myself to the violence that goes on everywhere. I am still so surprised! That is why I am against it. We must learn to be surprised."
— Abraham Joshua Heschel

"It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion--its message becomes meaningless."
— Abraham Joshua Heschel (God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism)