Abraham Joshua Heschel

People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state--it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle.... Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Wisdom of Heschel

The primary purpose of prayer is not to make requests. The primary purpose is to praise, to sing, to chant. Because the essence of prayer is a song, and man cannot live without a song.

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.

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.

Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.

When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.

Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.

Man is a messenger who forgot the message.

It is not enough for me to ask questions; I want to know how to answer the one question that seems to encompass everything I face: What am I here for?

Some are guilty but all are responsible.

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.

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.

God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light.

Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.

The self is not the hub but the spoke of the revolving wheel.

We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.

We can never sneer at the stars, mock the dawn, or scoff at the totality of being.

I would say about individuals, an individual dies when he ceases 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 accommodate, I don't accommodate 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.

There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious. Judaism teaches us to be attached to holiness in time; to learn how to consecrate sanctuaries that emerge from the magnificent stream of a year.

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

Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.

-Abraham Joshua Heschel