“When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.”

“An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language.”

“Solitude is the place of purification.”

I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man’s life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.

Every person born into the world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique… If there had been someone like her in the world, there would have been no need for her to be born. 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. You should carefully observe the way toward which your heart draws you, then choose this way with all your strength.

There are three principles in a man’s being and life: The principle of thought, the principle of speech, and the principle of action. The origin of all conflict between me and my fellow-men is that I do not say what I mean and I don’t do what I say.

Man wishes to be confirmed in his being by man, and wishes to have a presence in the being of the other… Secretly and bashfully he watches for a YES which allows him to be and which can come to him only from one human person to another.

Love is responsibility of an I for a You: in this consists what cannot consist in any feeling – the equality of all lovers. Feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love. That is no metaphor, but the actual truth. Love does not cling to the I in such a way as to have the Thou only for its ” content,” its object; but love is between I and Thou. The man who does not know this, with his very being know this, does not know love; even though he ascribes to it the feelings he lives through, experiences, enjoys, and expresses. What you must do is love your neighbor as yourself. There is no one who knows your many faults better than you! But you love yourself notwithstanding. And so you must love your neighbor, no matter how many faults you see in him. The true meaning of love one’s neighbor is not that it is a command from God which we are to fulfill, but that through it and in it we meet God.

We cannot avoid using power, cannot escape the compulsion to afflict the world, so let us, cautious in diction and mighty in contradiction, love powerfully. The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.

There is no room for God in him who is full of himself. To begin with oneself but not to end with onself. To start from oneself but not to aim at oneself.

The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God. To look away from the world, or to stare at it, does not help a man to reach God; but he who sees the world in Him stands in His presence. We can be redeemed only to the extent to which we see ourselves. For God does not want to be believed in, to be debated and defended by us, but simply to be realized through us.

The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda. Everything depends on inner change; when this has taken place, then, and only then does the world change. When a man has made peace within himself, he will be able to make peace in the whole world.

“Spirit is not in the I but between I and You.”

“He who loves brings God and the World together.”

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~Martin Buber was an Austrian Jewish and Israeli philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of existentialism centered on the distinction between the I–Thou relationship and the I–It relationship.

Excerpts from Buber’s works.

Excellence Reporter 2023