Great Throughts Treasury

"I perceive something. I am sensible of something. I imagine something. I will something. I feel something. I think something. The life of human beings does not consist of all this and the like alone."

"I require a You to become; becoming I, I say You."

"If a person kills a tree before its time, it is like having murdered a soul."

"If I face a human being as my Thou, and say the primary word I-Thou to him, he is not a thing among things, and does not consist of things."

"In philosophical anthropology, ? where the subject is man in his wholeness, the investigator cannot content himself, as in anthropology as an individual science, with considering man as another part of nature and with ignoring the fact that he, the investigator, is himself a man and experiences this humanity in his inner experience in a way that he simply cannot experience any part of nature."

"If Thou is said, the I of the combination I-Thou is said along with it."

"If I had been asked in my early youth whether I preferred to have dealings only with men or only with books, my answer would certainly have been in favor of books. In later years this has become less and less the case. Not that I have had so much better experiences with men than with books; on the contrary, purely delightful books even now come my way more often than purely delightful men. But the many bad experiences with men have nourished the meadow of my life as the noblest book could not do, and the good experiences have made the earth into a garden for me? Here is an infallible test. Imagine yourself in a situation where you are alone, wholly alone on earth, and you are offered one of the two, books or men. I often hear men prizing their solitude, but that is only because there are still men somewhere on earth, even though in the far distance. I knew nothing of books when I came forth from the womb of my mother, and I shall die without books, with another human hand in my own. 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 being looking at me."

"It is said that man experiences his world. What does that mean?"

"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."

"In the ice of solitude man becomes most inexorably a question to himself, and just because the question pitilessly summons and draws into play his most secret life he becomes an experience to himself."

"It is not possible to live in the bare present. Life would be quite consumed if precautions were not taken to subdue the present speedily and thoroughly. But it is possible to live in the bare past, indeed only in it may a life be organized. We only need to fill each moment with experiencing and using, and it ceases to burn."

"Leisure is the exultation of the possible."

"Man is no longer able to master the world which he himself brought about: it is becoming stronger than he is, it is winning free of him, it confronts him in an almost elemental independence, and he no longer knows the word which could subdue and render harmless the golem he has created ... Man faced the terrible fact that he was the father of demons whose master he could not become."

"Love is responsibility of an I for a You: in this consists what cannot consist in any feeling - the equality of all lovers.."

"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."

"Man travels over the surface of things and experiences them. He extracts knowledge about their constitution from them: he wins an experience from them. He experiences what belongs to the things."

"Next to being the children of God our greatest privilege is being the brothers of each other."

"Now, he no longer promises others the fulfillment of his duties, but promises himself the fulfillment of man."

"One basic word is the word pair I-You."

"One cannot in the nature of things expect a little tree that has been turned into a club to put forth leaves."

"One cannot live in the pure present: it would consume us if care were not taken that it is overcome quickly and thoroughly. But in pure past one can live; in fact, only there can a life be arranged. One only has to fill every moment with experiencing and using, and it ceases to burn."

"Persons appear by entering into relation to other persons."

"Primary words do not describe something that might exist independently of them, but being spoken they bring about existence."

"Primary words do not signify things, but they intimate relations."

"Power abdicates only under the stress of counter-power."

"Primary words are spoken from the being."

"Success is not one of the names of God."

"Solitude is the place of purification."

"So long as you ?have? yourself, have yourself as an object, your experience of man is only as of a thing among things."

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

"The attitude of man is twofold in accordance with the two basic words he can speak."

"The basic word I-It can never be spoken with one?s whole being."

"The attitude of man is twofold, in accordance with the twofold nature of the primary words which he speaks."

"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."

"The existence of I and the speaking of I are one and the same thing."

"The I of the basic word I-Thou is different from that of the basic word I-It."

"The fact that every people feel itself threatened by the others gives the state its definite unifying powers; it depends upon the instinct of self-preservation of society itself; the latent external crisis enables it to get the upper hand in internal crises"

"The individual You must become an It when the event of relation has run its course."

"The basic word I-You establishes the world of relation."

"The It is the eternal chrysalis, the Thou the eternal butterfly ? except that situations do not always follow one another in clear succession, but often there is a happening profoundly twofold, confusedly entangled."

"The individual It can become a You by entering into the event of relation."

"The concept of guilt is found most powerfully developed even in the most primitive communal forms which we know? the man is guilty who violates one of the original laws which dominate the society and which are mostly derived from a divine founder; the boy who is accepted into the tribal community and learns its laws, which bind him thenceforth, learns to promise; this promise is often given under the sign of death, which is symbolically carried out on the boy, with a symbolical rebirth."

"The It is the chrysalis, the You the butterfly. Only it is not always as if these states took turns so neatly; often it is an intricately entangled series that is tortuously dual."

"The It-world hangs together in space and time."

"The life of a human being does not exist merely in the sphere of goal-directed verbs. It does not consist merely of activities that have something for their object."

"The one who count are those persons who-though they may be of little renown-respond to and are responsible for the continuation of the living spirit."

"The ones who count are those persons who - though they may be of little renown - respond to and are responsible for the continuation of the living spirit."

"The other basic word is the word pair I-It; but this basic word is not changed when He or She takes the place of It."

"The one primary word is the combination I-Thou."

"The other primary word is the combination I-It; wherein, without a change in the primary word, one of the words He and She can replace It."