Top 140 Martin Buber Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Our relationships live in the space between us which is sacred.”

— Martin Buber

2. “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”

— Martin Buber

3. “Through the Thou a person becomes I.”

— Martin Buber

4. “When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.”

— Martin Buber

5. “Nothing so tends to mask the face of God as religion; it can be a substitute for God himself.”

— Martin Buber

6. “All real living is meeting.”

— Martin Buber

7. “What you must do is love your neighbor as yourself. There is no one who knows your many faults better than you! But you love yourself notwithstanding. And so you must love your neighbor, no matter how many faults you see in him.”

— Martin Buber

8. “In spite of all similarities, every living situation has, like a newborn child, a new face, that has never been before and will never come again. It demands of you a reaction that cannot be prepared beforehand. It demands nothing of what is past. It demands presence, responsibility; it demands you.”

— Martin Buber

9. “The true meaning of love one’s neighbor is not that it is a command from God which we are to fulfill, but that through it and in it we meet God.”

— Martin Buber

10. “Human life and humanity come into being in genuine encounters. The hope for this hour depends upon the renewal of the immediacy of dialogue among human beings.”

— Martin Buber

11. “In the beginning was the relationship.”

— Martin Buber

12. “Every person born in this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique.”

— Martin Buber

13. “There is no room for God in him who is full of himself.”

— Martin Buber

14. “To love God truly, one must first love man. And if anyone tells you that he loves God and does not love his fellow-man, you will know that he is lying.”

— Martin Buber

15. “When people come to you for help, do not turn them off with pious words, saying, ‘Have faith and take your troubles to God.’ Act instead as though there were no God, as though there were only one person in the world who could help – only yourself.”

— Martin Buber

16. “We can be redeemed only to the extent to which we see ourselves.”

— Martin Buber

17. “Love is responsibility of an I for a You: in this consists what cannot consist in any feeling – the equality of all lovers...”

— Martin Buber

18. “As I actualize, I uncover.”

— Martin Buber

19. “Mundus vult decipi: the world wants to be deceived.”

— Martin Buber

20. “When a man has made peace within himself, he will be able to make peace in the whole world.”

— Martin Buber

21. “The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings.”

— Martin Buber

22. “To begin with oneself but not to end with onself. To start from oneself but not to aim at oneself.”

— Martin Buber

23. “God dwells wherever man lets Him in.”

— Martin Buber

24. “Everyone has in him something precious that is in no one else.”

— Martin Buber

25. “There is something that can be found in one place. It is a great treasure which may be called the fulfillment of existence. The place where this treasure can be found is the place where one stands.”

— Martin Buber

26. “The I of the basic word I-Thou is different from that of the basic word I-It.”

— Martin Buber

27. “Real faith means holding ourselves open to the unconditional mystery which we encounter in every sphere of our life and which cannot be comprised in any formula. Real faith means the ability to endure life in the face of this mystery.”

— Martin Buber

28. “No limits are set to the ascent of man, and to each and everyone the highest stands open. Here it is only your personal choice that decides.”

— Martin Buber

29. “You can rake the muck this way, rake the muck that way – it will always be muck. Have I sinned or have I not sinned? In the time I am brooding over it, I could be stringing pearls for the delight of Heaven.”

— Martin Buber

30. “If you want to raise a man from mud and filth, do not think it is enough to stay on top and reach a helping hand down to him. You must go all the way down yourself, down into mud and filth. Then take hold of him with strong hands and pull him and yourself out into the light.”

— Martin Buber

Featured in: Strong Quotes

31. “Everyone must come out of his Exile in his own way.”

— Martin Buber

32. “How would man exist if God did not need him, and how would you exist? You need God in order to be, and God needs you – for that is the meaning of your life.”

— Martin Buber

33. “The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.”

— Martin Buber

34. “Everything depends on inner change; when this has taken place, then, and only then does the world change.”

— Martin Buber

35. “It pains me to speak of God in the third person.”

— Martin Buber

36. “One must be truly able to say I in order to know the mystery of the Thou in its whole truth.”

— Martin Buber

Featured in: Mindfulness Quotes

37. “The beating heart of the universe is holy joy.”

— Martin Buber

38. “God made so many different kinds of people; why would God allow only one way to worship?”

— Martin Buber

39. “It is not the nature of the task, but its consecration, that is the vital thing.”

— Martin Buber

40. “God is the “mysterium tremendum,” that appears and overthrows, but he is also the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I.”

— Martin Buber

41. “The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda.”

— Martin Buber

42. “The basic word I-Thou can be spoken only with one’s whole being. The concentration and fusion into a whole being can never be accomplished by me, can never be accomplished without me. I require a Thou to become; becoming I, I say Thou.”

— Martin Buber

43. “To look away from the world, or to stare at it, does not help a man to reach God; but he who sees the world in Him stands in His presence.”

— Martin Buber

44. “Freedom and destiny are solemnly promised to one another and linked together in meaning.”

— Martin Buber

45. “To be old can be glorious if one has not unlearned how to begin.”

— Martin Buber

46. “I think no human being can give more than this. Making life possible for the other, if only for a moment.”

— Martin Buber

47. “Creation is not a hurdle on the road to God, it is the road itself.”

— Martin Buber

48. “Persons appear by entering into relation to other persons.”

— Martin Buber

49. “What has to be given up is not the I, as most mystics suppose: this I is indispensable for any relationship, including the highest, which always presupposes an I and You.”

— Martin Buber

50. “The future stands in need of you in order to be born.”

— Martin Buber