Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes

People never know what they want, though everyone says they do. If they did, nobody would ever be surprised.

Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise.

We're all just bags of bones and muscle and hormones; I'll never understand what makes our minds do the things we do. It's like that statue of the monkey holding a skull. We're trying to use a thing we don't understand to understand ourselves.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

Do I walk? Have I feet still? I raise my eyes, I let them move round, and turn myself with them, one circle, one circle, and I stand in the midst. All is as usual. Only the Militiaman Stanislaus Katczinsky has died. Then I know nothing more.

I could not be so sure of Spring / Save that it sings in me.

I am not omniscient, but I know a lot.

I'm not aware of too many things, I know what I know, if you know what I mean.

I tell myself that I know you, and then when I think about it, I realize that I don't.

You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.

... no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp.

I asked the Zebra, are you black with white stripes? Or white with black stripes? And the zebra asked me, Are you good with bad habits? Or are you bad with good habits? Are you noisy with quiet times? Or are you quiet with noisy times? Are you happy with some sad days? Or are you sad with some happy days? Are you neat with some sloppy ways? Or are you sloppy with some neat ways? And on and on and on and on and on and on he went. I’ll never ask a zebra about stripes...again.

Tell me about yourself, Miss Russel." I started to give him the obligatory response, first the demurral and then the reluctant flat autobiography, but some slight air of polite inattention in his manner stopped me. Instead, I found myself grinning at him. "Why don't you tell me about myself, Mr. Holmes?

So everything we believe about happiness is wrong," I said. He nodded. Everything?" I asked, when what I meant was, Everything? Including you? Including me? And Marcus, being Marcus, knew what I really wanted to know, and answered my silent, more significant question. He held up his hand to shield the rays and looked me in the eyes. Almost.

If you're wondering if you're dreaming, you're dreaming.

The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality.

Have I been blind, have I been lost, inside myself and my own mind?

I have discovered nothing new; I have only perceived what I already knew.

I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am.

Awareness is an inner quality of consciousness; it has nothing to do with closed or open eyes.

What your glasse telles you, will not be told by Councell.

Nothing that lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth.

We may listen to our inner self-and still not know which ocean we hear roaring.

So here's something I know to be true, although it's a little corny, and I don't quite know what to do with it.