Abraham Joshua Heschel Quotes

Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage.

Inauthenticity is endemic in American politics today. The political backrooms where I spent much of my career were just as benighted as my personal life, equally crowded with shadowy strangers and compromises, truths I hoped to deny. I lived not in one closet but in many.

None of us is guaranteed against failure or corruption of any kind; witness what's going on in the world in this moment, the follies of human nature and the failures of human nature.

The world wants to be deceived.

We have a never sated appetite for self deception.

'Tis very strange Men should be so fond of being thought wickeder than they are.

Governor [Myron] Herrick is not a bad man; he is simply weak. He is one of those men who can do dishonest things honestly.

Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that, if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?

Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe.

Falsehoods of convenience or vanity, falsehoods from which no evil immediately visible ensues, except the general degradation of human testimony, are very lightly uttered, and once uttered are sullenly supported.

The commonest weakness of our race is our ability to rationalize our most selfish purposes.

There are two kinds of people in this world: people who want to be desired, and people who want to be desired so much that they pretend they don't.

You can be the smartest person in the world - which Bill Clinton is, and if he's not, his wife is - and care more than anybody else in the world - which he does, I don't doubt that for a minute. And you can care so much that you're willing to be dishonest - you can tell people one thing but do another because you really know it's for their own good. And you'll still screw it all up. Because the whole premise of what you're doing is wrong!

I think the easiest people to fool are ourselves. Fooling ourselves may even be a necessary precondition for fooling others.

Hypocrisy is nothing, in fact, but a horrible hopefulness.

Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial, but generally speaking it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber; it is selfishness and impatience rather than generosity and fortitude, that one hears of. There is so little real friendship in the world! – and unfortunately' (speaking low and tremulously) 'there are so many who forget to think seriously till it is almost too late.

We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream.

On the surface, we're polar opposites. Under the skin, though, we're the same: people think they know what they're getting, and they're always wrong.

Truth is not always the best basis for happiness. There are certain lies which may constitute a far better and more secure foundation of happiness. There are people who perish when their eyes are opened.

Why do you think people cheat?," I asked. "Because they're bored? Because they can? Because they're selfish and think they're entitled to anything they want? Because they don't think they'll get caught?

Of all the causes which conspire to blind Man's erring judgement, and misguide the mind, What the weak head with strongest bias rules, Is PRIDE, the never-failing vice of fools.

I conduct my life with an expectation that people will do the right thing. Yet even with all my experience, I am still surprised when they do not.

The reason we are so pleased to find other people's secrets is that it distracts public attention from our own.

That knave preserves the pearl in his purse who considers all people purse-cuts.

The reason why most people are frustrated is because a lie cannot be turned into a truth.