Martin Buber Quotes

We can be redeemed only to the extent to which we see ourselves.

~ Martin Buber

Everyone must come out of his Exile in his own way.

~ Martin Buber

A great relationship ... breaches the barriers of a lofty solitude, subdues its strict law, and throws a bridge from self-being to self-being across the abyss of dread of the universe.

~ Martin Buber

Trust, trust in the world, because this human being exists - that is the most inward achievement of the relation in education. Because this human being exists, meaninglessness, however hard pressed you are by it, cannot be the real truth. Because this human being exists, in the darkness the light lies hidden, in fear salvation, and in the callousness of one's fellow-men the great Love.

~ Martin Buber

All real living is meeting.

~ Martin Buber

Dialogic is not to be identified with love. But love without dialogic, without real outgoing to the other, reaching to the other, the love remaining with itself - this is called Lucifer.

~ Martin Buber

Feelings are 'entertained', love comes to pass. Feelings dwell in man, but man dwells in his love.

~ Martin Buber

An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.

~ Martin Buber

But when a man draws a lifeless thing into his passionate longing for dialogue, lending it independence and as it were a soul, then there may dawn in him the presentiment of a world-wide dialogue with the world-happening that steps up to him even in his environment, which consists partially of things. Or do you seriously think that the giving and taking of signs halts on the threshold of that business where an honest and open spirit is found?

~ Martin Buber

The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.

~ Martin Buber

For sin is just this, what man cannot by its very nature do with his whole being; it is possible to silence the conflict in the soul, but it is not possible to uproot it.

~ Martin Buber

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

~ Martin Buber