Harry Emerson Fosdick Quotations

Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.

Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us but in what we make out of what they do to us.

Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.

God is not a cosmic bellboy for whom we can press a button to get things.

I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.

Don't simply retire from something; have something to retire to.

He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles.

To keep the Golden Rule we must put ourselves in other people's places, but to do that consists in and depends upon picturing ourselves in their places.

Every human life involves an unfathomable mystery, for man is the riddle of the universe, and the riddle of man in his endowment with personal capacities.

No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.

Life asks not merely what you can do; it asks how much can you endure and not be spoiled.

Picture yourself vividly as winning, and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success.

The steady discipline of intimate friendship with Jesus results in men becoming like Him.

A person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.

Our power is not so much in us as through us.

The world is moving so fast these days that the one who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.

I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses...

Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.

He who cannot rest, cannot work; he who cannot let go, cannot hold on; he who cannot find footing, cannot go forward.

God has put within our lives meanings and possibilities that quite outrun the limits of mortality.

We cannot all be great, but we can always attach ourselves to something that it great.

He who chooses the beginning of the road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determines the end.

Preaching is personal counseling on a group basis.

Whatever you laugh at in others, laughs at yourself

I hate war... for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it.

Religion is not a burden, not a weight, it is wings.

The tragedy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst.

He who chooses the beginning of the road chooses the place it leads to.

A good sermon is an engineering operation by which a chasm is bridged so that the spiritual goods on one side-the 'unsearchable riches of Christ' - are actually transported into personal lives upon the other.

It is going to be a long, hard haul; it will require patience, courage, faith that hangs on when hope fails, if we are to tame the rude barbarity of man, so that the atomic age becomes a blessing, not a curse. There never was such a day for the Christian gospel. God help us all in these years ahead to make that gospel live in men and nations!

The most extraordinary thing about the oyster is this. Irritations set into his shell. He does not like them. But when he cannot get ride of them, he uses the irritation to do the loveliest thing an oyster ever has a chance to do. If there are irritations in our lives today, there is only one prescription: make a pearl. It may have to be a pearl of patience, but anyhow, make a pearl. And it takes faith and I love to do it.

Nothing in this world is more inspiring than a soul up against crippling circumstances who carries it off with courage and faith and undefeated character-nothing! See Light From Many Lamps, edited by L. E. Watson, article by H. E. Fosdick, pp. 93-94 re: a serious cripple who succeeded.

He is a poor son whose sonship does not make him desire to serve all men's mothers.

A supremely religious man or woman is one who believes deeply and consistently in the veracity of his highest experiences. He has his hours in the cellar ... but he believes in the truth of the hours he spends upstairs.

Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us, but in what we make out of what they do to us

One of the most amazing things ever said on this earth is Jesus's statement: "He that is greatest among you shall be your servant." Nobody has one chance in a billion of being thought really great after a century has passed except those who have been the servants of all. That strange realist from Bethlehem knew that.

The all but unanimous judgment seems to be that we, the democracies, are just as responsible for the rise of the dictators as the dictatorships themselves, and perhaps more so.

We cannot all be great, but we can always attach ourselves to something that is great.

I renounce war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatred it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in place of democracy, for the starvation that stalks after it. I renounce war, and never again, directly or indirectly, will I sanction or support another.

Money is a miraculous thing. It is your personal energy reduced to a portable form and endowed with power you yourself do not possess. It can go where you cannot go; speak languages you cannot speak; lift burdens you cannot touch with your fingers; save lives with which you cannot deal directly.

Every failure can be considered as a tragedy or a chance to learn something. The latter is healthier

Atheism is a theoretical formulation of the discouraged life...

Nothing else matters much...not wealth, nor learning, nor even health...without this gift: the spiritual capacity to keep zest in living. This is the creed of creeds, the final deposit and distillation of all important faiths: that you should be able to believe in life.

He is a poor patriot whose patriotism does not enable him to understand how all men everywhere feel about their altars and their hearthstones, their flag and their fatherland.

The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of spiritual truth.

The first question to be answered by any individual or any social group, facing a hazardous situation, is whether the crisis is to be met as a challenge to strength or as an occasion for despair.

Granted the endless variations of moral customs, still the essential standards persist. As in a scientific laboratory, all else may change but the standards are unalterable- disinterested love of truth, fidelity to facts, accuracy in measurement, exactness of verification-so, in life as a whole, the towering ethical criteria remain unshaken. Falsehood is never better than truth, theft better than than honesty, treachery better than loyalty, cowardice better than courage.

The more we know about this universe, the more mysterious it is. The old world that Job knew was marvelous enough, and his description of its wonders is among the noblest poetry of the race, but today the new science has opened to our eyes vistas of mystery that transcend in their inexplicable marvel anything the ancients ever dreamed.

We must take the abiding spiritual values which inhere in the deep experiences of religion in all ages and give them new expression in terms of the framework which our new knowledge gives us. Science forces religion to deal with new ideas in the theoretical realm and new forces in the practical realm.

Some things mankind can finish and be done with, but not ... science, that persists, and changes from ancient Chaldeans studying the stars to a new telescope with a 200-inch reflector and beyond; not religion, that persists, and changes from old credulities and world views to new thoughts of God and larger apprehensions of his meaning.

Every great scientist becomes a great scientist because of the inner self-abnegation with which he stands before truth, saying: "Not my will, but thine, be done." What, then, does a man mean by saying, Science displaces religion, when in this deep sense science itself springs from religion?

Every year the inventions of science weave more inextricably the web that binds man to man, group to group, nation to nation.

One could almost phrase the motto of our modern civilization thus: Science is my shepherd; I shall not want.

Opinions may be mistaken; love never is.

Divinity is not something supernatural that ever and again invades the natural order in a crashing miracle. Divinity is not in some remote heaven, seated on a throne. Divinity is love. . . . Wherever goodness, beauty, truth, love, are-there is the divine.

No virtue is more universally accepted as a test of good character than trustworthiness .

Friends are necessary to a happy life. When friendship deserts us, we are as helpless as a ship left by the tide high upon the shore. When friendship returns to us, it's as though the tide came back, giving us buoyancy and freedom.

[L]ife ceases to be a fraction and becomes an integer.

The finest quality of our characters do not come from trying but from the mysterious and yet most effective capacity to be inspired.

It is by acts (actions) and not by ideas (mere thoughts) that people [really] live.

Falsehood is never better than truth, theft better than honesty, treachery better than loyalty, cowardice better than courage.

What a testing of character adversity is.

We cannot restore integrity and morality to our society until each of us-singly and individually-takes responsibility for our actions.

We ask the leaf, "Are you complete in yourself?" And the leaf answers, "No, my life is in the branches." We ask the branch, and the branch answers, "No my life is in the root." We ask the root, and it answers, "No my life is in the trunk and the branches and the leaves. Keep the branches stripped of leaves, and I shall die," So it is with the great tree of being. Nothing is completely and merely individual.

Of all mad faiths maddest is the faith that we can get rid of faith.

One of the strange phenomena of the last century is the spectacle of religion dropping the appeal of fear while other human interests have picked it up.

The process has now run full circle: Preaching originates in personal counseling; preaching is personal counseling on a group basis; personal counseling originates in preaching. Personal counseling imparts to the preacher a practical familiarity with human nature which he would not otherwise obtain.

Religion is something that only secondarily can be taught. It must must primarily be taught.

The stars are not so strange as the mind that studies them, analyzes their light, and measures their distance.

All intelligent faith in God has behind it a background of humble agnosticism.

Happiness is not mostly pleasure, it is mostly victory.

One never finds life worth living. One always has to make it work living.

Great living starts with a picture, held in your imagination, of what you would like to do or be.

Christ has given us the most glorious interpretation of life's meaning that man has ever had. The fatherhood of God, the fellowship of the Spirit, the sovereignty of righteousness, the law of love, the glory of service, the coming of the Kingdom, the eternal hope- there was never an interpretation of life to compare with that.

My friends, nothing in all the world is so much worth thinking of as God, Christ, the Bible, sin and salvation, the divine purposes for humankind, life everlasting. But you cannot challenge the dedicated thinking of this generation to these sublime themes upon any such terms as are laid down by an intolerant church.

Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind's eye and you will be drawn toward it. Picture yourself vividly as winning and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success. Great living starts with a picture, held in your imagination, of what you would like to do or be.

Self-pity gets you nowhere. But insight to see that something can be done with the second-bests and adventurous daring to try might be a handle to take hold of.

No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it.--Harry Emerson FosdickNo one can get inner peace by pouncing on it.

In the foothills of the Himalayas, one hears the prayer: "Oh Lord, we know not what is good for us. You know what it is. For it we pray."

Nothing in human life, least of all in religion, is ever right until it is beautiful.

It is cynicism and fear that freeze life; it is faith that thaws it out, releases it, sets it free.

When you hear a person say, "I hate," adding the name of some race, nation, religion, or social class, you are dealing with a belated mind. That person may dress like a modern, ride in an automobile, listen to the radio, but his or her mind is properly dated about 1000 B.C.

Fearr imprisons, faith liberates; fear paralyzes, faith empowers; fear disheartens, faith encourages; fear sickens, faith heals; fear makes useless, faith also makes serviceable az quotes.

No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it.

No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it, by vigorously willing to have it ... Peace is a consciousness of springs too deep for earthly droughts to dry up. Peace is the gift not of volitional struggle but of spiritual hospitality.

The man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

No character is ultimately tested until it has suffered.

...while science gives us implements to use, science alone does not determine for what ends they will be employed. Radio is an amazing invention. Yet now that it is here, one suspects that Hitler never could have consolidated his totalitarian control over Germany without its use. One never can tell what hands will reach out to lay hold on scientific gifts, or to what employment they will be put. Ever the old barbarian emerges, destructively using the new civilization.

Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it.

Men will work hard for money. They will work harder for other men. But men will work hardest of all when they are dedicated to a cause. Until willingness overflows obligation, men fight as conscripts rather than following the flag as patriots. Duty is never worthily performed until it is performed by one who would gladly do more if only he could.

No one can be wrong with man and right with God.

Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sours life; love sweetens it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Bitterness blinds life; love anoints its eyes.

While each of us ... has depressed hours, none of us needs to be a depressed person.

Democracy is not simply a political system; it is a moral movement and it springs from adventurous faith in human possibilities.

All altruism springs from putting yourself in the other person's place.

No man is the whole of himself; his friends are the rest of him.

No man need stay the way he is.

One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world -- making the most of one's best.

Life is like a library owned by the author. In it are a few books which he wrote himself, but most of them were written for him.