When people come to you for help, do not turn them off with pious words, saying, 'Have faith and take your troubles to God.' Act instead as though there were no God, as though there were only one person in the world who could help -- only yourself.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of personal responsibility in helping others.
Martin Buber suggests that when individuals seek help, it is vital to engage with them sincerely and actively rather than simply invoking faith or spirituality. He advocates for taking personal responsibility to provide support, as if we were the sole source of assistance available to them, thereby emphasizing the importance of compassionate human connection and action over abstract religious platitudes.
In practice
In a speech about community service, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of direct action.
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.
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.
God dwells wherever man lets Him in.
Sweet Memory! wafted by thy gentle gale, Oft up the stream of Time I turn my sail.
Character is the only secure foundation of the state.
Did you ever notice how difficult it is to argue with someone who is not obsessed with being right?
The machine will grind you down, but the machine is not bigger than the imagination. Rome fell in a day. We know this.
When my father started talking about strip mining in the Appalachia back in the '60s, I remember a conversation I had with him where he said, you know, this is the richest state in the country if you look at the resources and the land, but the poorest people after the state of Mississippi: the 49th poorest people in the country.
Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself.
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