Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes

Logotherapy sees the human patient in all his humanness. I step up to the core of the patient's being. And that is a being in search of meaning, a being that is transcending himself, a being capable of acting in love for others.

Why had he never appreciated the miracle that he was, brain and nerve and bounding heart?

Man is a wonder to himself; he can neither govern nor know himself.

You don't need the iPhone: you have the most exquisite apparatus in the known universe sitting right in your head - the most complex organization of matter in the entire universe. And here are we, feeling a little depressed, feeling like we're not getting where we need to be, when really you might be exactly where you need to be.

Everything depends therefore on encountering thought at its source. Such thought is the reality of man's being, which achieved consciousness and understanding of itself through it.

Look around the inhabited world; how few know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.

There is an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.

We never completely comprehend ourselves, but we can do far more than comprehend.

I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.

I think most people are interested in our origins; once we understand, it might be easier to become the people we'd like to be. Or, better, become the people we think we already are.

The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed to perfection, but one step first, and then another on the ladder.

We are not what we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for what we are capable of being.

I can't imagine, as a human being, not being able to grow.

I do believe that for me, my own personal journey has been one in which my voice has also been appreciated.

We all believe that we are a certain kind of person, but we never know until we do something that proves otherwise, or until we die.

I am nothing and should be everything.

I have never known a greater miracle, or monster, than myself.

It takes longer for man to find out man than any other creature that is made.

The aim of life is to be fully born, though its tragedy is that most of us die before we are thus born.

Know that you yourself are a miracle.

What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization.

The searching for our selves is the most agonizing, isn't it? - and yet the most stimulating - and one simply cannot escape it.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

Man is a universe within himself.

It's one thing for other people to see potential in you, and it's quite another for you to understand that and see it in yourself.