Harry Emerson Fosdick Quotes

A person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.

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

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.

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

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

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

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."

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Whatever you laugh at in others, laughs at yourself.

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.

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.

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

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

Always take a job that is too big for you.

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.

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

Opinions may be mistaken; love never is.

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.

Preaching is personal counseling on a group basis.

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.

No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it.

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.

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.

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

No character is ultimately tested until it has suffered.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Whatever the situation and however disheartening it may be, it is a great hour when a man ceases adopting difficulties as an excuse for despondency and tackles himself as the real problem. No mood need be his master.

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

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 steam or gas drives anything until it is confined. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, and disciplined.

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

Happiness is not mostly pleasure, it is mostly victory.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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?

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

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.

I have heard stories from the depths of human lives where men and women were wrestling with the elemental problems of misery and sin--stories that put upon a man's heart a burden of vicarious sorrow, even though he does but listen to them. Here was real human need crying out after the living God revealed in Christ. Consider all the multitudes of men who so need God, and then think of Christian churches making of themselves a cockpit of controversy when there is not a single thing at stake in the business. So much of it does not matter! And there is one thing that does matter--more than anything else in all the world--that men in their personal lives and in their social relationships should know Jesus Christ.

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.

No man need stay the way he is.

The Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea are made of the same water. It flows down, clean and cool, from the heights of Herman and the roots of the cedars of Lebanon. the Sea of Galilee makes beauty of it, the Sea of Galilee has an outlet. It gets to give. It gathers in its riches that it may pour them out again to fertilize the Jordan plain. But the Dead Sea with the same water makes horror. For the Dead Sea has no outlet. It gets to keep.

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.

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.