Martin Buber's Quotes

Solitude is the place of purification.

There are three principles in a man's being and life, the principle of thought, the principle of speech, and the principle of action. The origin of all conflict between me and my fellow-men is that I do not say what I mean and I don't do what I say.

A person cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human. To become human, is what this individual person, has been created for.

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

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

I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human face looking at me.

Play is the exultation of the possible.

An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language.

Through the Thou a person becomes I.

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

God wants man to fulfill his commands as a human being and with the quality peculiar to human beings.

The law is not thrust upon man; it rests deep within him, to waken when the call comes.

For sin is just this, what man cannot by its very nature do with his whole being; it is possible to silence the conflict in the soul, but it is not possible to uproot it.

I am alone, some people help me, but, basically, I can do what I want.

Often you need to take some risk, but it must be a realistic risk, you can't take a crazy risk.

The pole vault is a very complicated event, there are many things involved.

You need to work very hard, you have to spend a lot of time practicing your sport - six to seven hours daily.

The strategy of my coach and me was that we looked at pictures of all the best pole vaulters from around the world, and we took the best parts from them, and we created a person that had never existed. We then started to work toward being such a person.

Even now I want to keep my amateur spirit, to spend my time, to be in the sport with all my heart.

I began with track and field because this is what I know.