Abraham HeschelThinkers

Abstinence is easy... the challenge is to enjoy life and retain spiritual integrity.

Abstinence is not a viable path toward self-betterment. Our concern ought not to be how to worship in the catacombs but how to remain human in the skyscrapers.

Action is always vicarious faith.

Anger is an emotion which, when felt in a controversy, at that very instant we have already ceased striving for truth and have begun striving for ourselves.

Appreciation is mutually reinforcing. To appreciate appreciation seems to be the fundamental prerequisite for survival.

Being is given justice only by relating it to the transcendent care for being in that being is transcended by a concern for being.

Being points beyond itself, not spatially, but categorically, in a higher category than being: the power of maintaining being.

Being human is to move between the modes of Self-sufficiency, independence, the capacity to stand apart, to differ, to resist, and to defy-all.

The Bible is a book whose demands can be largely compressed into the imperative: remember!

Celebration is a confrontation involving the giving of attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.

Celebration is a power that we are losing today: it is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation and it stands in contrast to being entertained which is a passive state marked by amusement or spectacle.

Criticism is best when it begins with self-criticism.