Martin Buber Quotes

We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.

Man shapes himself through decisions that shape his environment.

One isn't born one's self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people's ideas - and you have to work through it all.

I believe that every human soul is teaching something to someone nearly every minute here in mortality.

I believe people are in our lives for a reason. We're here to learn from each other.

I love human beings. I believe that there is so much to learn from every person you meet, including a child.

There's only person in the world you can't see - yourself. But, God created - or whoever created us, we don't even have to argue that point - created us so perfect because we can actually see ourselves in other people.

How could there be any question of acquiring or possessing, when the one thing needful for a man is to become - to be at last, and to die in the fullness of his being.

I do find that I tend to write about big questions. Why are we here? What are we doing? How do we relate to each other?

Everybody I interacted with in my life, directly or indirectly, has placed a fingerprint upon my life. That combination has made me who I am.

There is no fixed, true and real person inside of you or me, precisely because being a person necessarily implies becoming a person, being in process.

And maybe it is only by finding yourself that you can feel the true intensity of becoming close to another person.

The isolated individual is not a real person. A real person is one who lives in and for others. And the more personal relationships we form with others, the more we truly realize ourselves as persons. It has even been said that there can be no true person unless there are two, entering into communication with one another.

What we have not has made us what we are. / ... / What we are not drives us to consummation.

When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.

Becoming is superior to being.

Every person with whom you interact is a part of the person you are becoming. Not a single interaction with a single person is left out of the process of your becoming.

One of the best ways to educate our hearts is to look at our interaction with other people, because our relationships with others are fundamentally a reflection of our relationship with ourselves.

To know anything about oneself one must know all about others.

In relationship with others, it is only you mirrored.

No man is your enemy, no man is your friend, every man is your teacher.

You have to make mistakes to find out who you aren't. You take the action, and the insight follows: You don't think your way into becoming yourself.

Relationships are our primary teacher. They are the context in which we either grow into God consciousness, or deny ourselves and others the opportunity to do so.

I identify myself in language, but only by losing myself in it like an object. What is realised in my history is not the past definite of what was, since it is no more, or even the present perfect of what has been in what I am, but the future anterior of what I shall have been for what I am in the process of becoming.

Through your love for each other, through learning the art of making one person happy, you learn to express your love for the whole of humanity and all beings. Please help us develop the curriculum for the Institute for the Happiness of One Person. Don't wait until we open the school. You can begin practicing right away.