Mohammed Ridha > Mohammed's Quotes

“We have given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess through your own judgement and decision. The nature of all other creatures is defined and restricted within laws which We have laid down; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, to whose custody We have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature [...]. We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.”
― Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man

“We are our choices.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.”
― Franz Kafka

“I carry the bars within me.”
― Franz Kafka

“But what if all the tranquility, all the comfort, all the contentment were now to come to a horrifying end?”
― Franz Kafka

“From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“But a person, I would say, is an individual living really with the world. And 'with' the world, I don't mean in the world- just in real contact, in real reciprocity with the world in all the points in which the world can meet man.”
― Martin Buber

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”
― Martin Buber

“An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.”
― Martin Buber

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

“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

“I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man's life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience. ”
― Martin Buber

“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.”
― Martin Buber

“And if there were a devil it would not be one who decided against God, but one who, in eternity, came to no decision. ”
― Martin Buber, I and Thou

“Man wishes to be confirmed in his being by man, and wishes to have a presence in the being of the other….
Secretly and bashfully he watches for a YES which allows him to be and which can come to him only from one human person to another.
”
― Martin Buber, I and Thou

“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, I and Thou

“Feelings dwell in man; but man dwells in his love. That is no metaphor, but the actual truth. Love does not cling to the I in such a way as to have the Thou only for its " content," its object; but love is between I and Thou. The man who does not know this, with his very being know this, does not know love; even though he ascribes to it the feelings he lives through, experiences, enjoys, and expresses.”
― Martin Buber, I and Thou

“I will say this quite plainly, what truly human is -and don't be afraid of this word- love. And I mean it even with everything that burdens love or, i could say it better, responsibility is actually love, as Pascal said: 'without concupiscence' [without lust]... love exists without worrying being loved.”
― Emmanuel Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind

“To begin with, we put the proposition: pure phenomenology is the science of pure consciousness.”
― Edmund Husserl

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of... We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.”
― Erich Fromm

“One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.”
― Erich Fromm

“Man’s main task is to give birth to himself. ”
― Erich Fromm

“There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain. ”
― R.D. Laing

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
― Albert Camus

“Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.”
― Paul Tillich

“Sometimes I think it is my mission to bring faith to the faithless, and doubt to the faithful.”
― Paul Tillich

“In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.”
― Rollo May

“Hate is not the opposite of love; apathy is.”
― Rollo May