Harry Emerson Fosdick Quotes
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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.
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Democracy is not simply a political system; it is a moral movement and it springs from adventurous faith in human possibilities.
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A person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.
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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.
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Life asks not merely what you can do; it asks how much can you endure and not be spoiled.
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War's tragedy is that it uses man's best to do man's worst.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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No virtue is more universally accepted as a test of good character than trustworthiness.
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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.
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One could almost phrase the motto of our modern civilization thus: Science is my shepherd; I shall not want.
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We cannot all be great, but we can always attach ourselves to something that is great.
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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.
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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.
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Atheism is a theoretical formulation of the discouraged life.
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Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
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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.
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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.
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No one can be wrong with man and right with God.
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Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us, but in what we make out of what they do to us.
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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.