Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.
Few are guilty, but all are responsible.
A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture.
When I marched with Martin Luther King in Selma, I felt my legs were praying.
We can all do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and all frustrations and all disappointments.
There is happiness in the love of labor, there is misery in the love of gain.
Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.
I have one talent, and that is the capacity to be tremendously surprised, surprised at life, at ideas. This is to me the supreme Hasidic imperative: Don’t be old. Don’t be stale.
The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living.
Our concern is not how to worship in the catacombs but how to remain human in the skyscrapers.
Self-respect is the fruit of discipline.
Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.
The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith.
Prayer begins at the edge of emptiness.
The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments.
God is not nice. God is not an uncle. God is an earthquake.
To be spiritual is to be amazed.
To abstain completely from all enjoyments may be easy. Yet to enjoy life and retain spiritual integrity – there is the challenge.
Worship is a way of seeing the world in the light of God.
Awe enables us to see in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple, to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.