George Davis Herron Quotes

United States, Clergyman
1862 – 1925.

George Davis Herron was an American clergyman, lecturer, writer, and Christian socialist activist. Herron is best remembered as a leading exponent of the so-called "Social Gospel" movement and for his highly publicized divorce and remarriage to the daughter of a wealthy benefactor which scandalized polite society of the day. A self-imposed exile from America followed. During World War I, Herron broke with the anti-militarist Socialist Party, became a selfasigned diplomat and filed regular intelligence reports on German public opinion to the American and British governments in support of the Allied war effort.

Also known as Lecturer, Writer

If we stay at our posts, in order that we may change the system, we are on the backs of our brothers; if we desert our posts, in order that we may get off our brothers' backs, we take bread from their mouths, from the mouths of their children, and add to the army of the workless and hopeless.

George Davis Herron
- Brother
- Back
- Hopeless
All that is good in civilization must be for the equal use of all, in order that each man may make his life most worthwhile to the common life and to himself.

George Davis Herron

No man has ever ruled other men for their own good.

George Davis Herron
- Good
- Man
- Ruled
Whoever says that a man can live the Christian life, while at the same time successfully participating in the present order of things, is either profound in the lack of knowledge, or else he deliberately lies.

George Davis Herron
- Life
- Knowledge
- Lies
The hope of the social reformer is to open wide the gates of opportunity, so that every creature, from the least to the greatest, may make his life a moral adventure and a joy, and exhaust his possibilities in the thing he can best do.

George Davis Herron
- Life
- Hope
- Opportunity
The possession of power over others is inherently destructive both to the possessor of the power and to those over whom it is exercised.

George Davis Herron
It is only the densest ethical ignorance that talks about a "Christian business" life; for business is now intrinsically evil.

George Davis Herron
- Business
- Evil
- Ignorance
The only possible innocence that remains to me, while I pay forced tribute to the system, while I profit by its corrupting influences and agencies, while I bear my part in the culpable public ignorance and guilty moral apathy, is that of protest and exhaustless effort.

George Davis Herron

Civilization no longer represents the conscience of the individuals who must find therein their work. The facts and forces which now organize industry and so-called justice, violate the best instincts of mankind.

George Davis Herron
- Work
- Mankind
- Conscience
No longer is it possible for men to be content to have, while their brothers have not. The physical misery of the world's disinherited is becoming the spiritual misery of the world's elect. Superior privileges of any sort now carry with them the sense of shame.

George Davis Herron
- Shame
- Misery
- Privileges