Harry Emerson Fosdick Quotes
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No virtue is more universally accepted as a test of good character than trustworthiness.
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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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The tragic evils of our life are so commonly unintentional. We did not start out for that poor, cheap goal. That aim was not in our minds at all....Look to the road you are walking on. He who picks up one end of a stick picks up the other.He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to.
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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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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.
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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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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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He is a poor son whose sonship does not make him desire to serve all men's mothers.
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Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
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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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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.
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We cannot all be great, but we can always attach ourselves to something that is great.
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Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
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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.
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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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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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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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It is magnificent to grow old, if one keeps young.
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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 could almost phrase the motto of our modern civilization thus: Science is my shepherd; I shall not want.
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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.
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No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.