It is usual to think of good and evil as two poles, two opposite directions, the antithesis of one another...We must begin by doing away with this convention.
Interpretation
The quote challenges the conventional dichotomy of good and evil, suggesting a need to rethink this binary perspective.
Martin Buber's quote invites us to reconsider our traditional understanding of good and evil as fixed opposites. He argues that viewing them merely as antithetical forces limits our understanding of moral complexity and the human experience, urging us to explore a more nuanced perspective that transcends simplistic categorizations.
In practice
In a discussion about ethical dilemmas, this quote can remind participants to consider gray areas rather than strictly good vs. evil.
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.
Play is the exultation of the possible.
There is no room for God in him who is full of himself.
Every person born in this world represents something new, something that never existed before, something original and unique.
God dwells wherever man lets Him in.
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.
Any story that you tell about yourself causes suffering. There is no authentic story.
Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things To low ambition and the pride of kings. Let us (since life can little more supply Than just to look about us, and to die) Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man; A mighty maze! but not without a plan.
Above literature?' said the Queen. 'Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
Know that you are a miracle and that you have a unique place in the cosmic plan. You are here to be the presence of love. You are here to be the presence of joy. You are here to be the presence of peace.
They dared not peer down into their own natures, down into the feverish confusion that filled their minds with a kind of dense, acrid mist.
We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man's afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures.
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