Howard Thurman Quotes

When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart. ~ Howard Thurman

The Christian Church has tended to overlook its Judaic origins, but the fact is that Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew of Palestine when he went about his Father's business, announcing the acceptable year of the Lord. ~ Howard Thurman

Community cannot for long feed on itself; it can only flourish with the coming of others from beyond, their unknown and undiscovered brothers. ~ Howard Thurman

Perfect love is long delayed. ~ Howard Thurman

There are two questions that we have to ask ourselves. The first is 'Where am I going?' and the second is 'Who will go with me?' ~ Howard Thurman

Jesus rejected hatred because he saw that hatred meant death to the mind, death to the spirit, and death to communion with his Father. He affirmed life; and hatred was the great denial. ~ Howard Thurman

Do not be silent; there is no limit to the power that may be released through you. ~ Howard Thurman

To love is to make of one's heart a swinging door. ~ Howard Thurman

He recognized with authentic realism that anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny. ~ Howard Thurman

Of all weapons, love is the most deadly and devastating, and few there be who dare trust their fate in its hands. ~ Howard Thurman

The basic fact is that Christianity as it was born in the mind of this Jewish thinker and teacher appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed. That it became, through the intervening years, a religion of the powerful and the dominant, used sometimes as an instrument of oppression, must not tempt us into believing that it was thus in the mind and life of Jesus. 'In him was life; and the life was the light of men.' Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them. ~ Howard Thurman

Fate is the raw materials of experience. They come uninvited and often unanticipated. Destiny is what a man does with these raw materials. ~ Howard Thurman

Love has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale ... Love loves; this is its nature. ~ Howard Thurman

A profound piece of surgery has to take place in the very psyche of the disinherited before the great claim of the religion of Jesus can be presented. The great stretches of barren places in the soul must be revitalized, brought to life, before they can be challenged. Tremendous skill and power must be exercised to show the disinherited the awful results of the role of negative deception into which their lives have been cast. How to do this is perhaps the greatest challenge that the religion of Jesus faces in modern life.

Mere preaching is not enough. What are words, however sacred and powerful, in the presence of the grim facts of the daily struggle to survive? Any attempt to deal with this situation on a basis of values that disregard the struggle for survival appears to be in itself a compromise with life. It is only when people live in an environment in which they are not required to exert supreme effort into just keeping alive that they seem to be able to selects ends besides those of mere physical survival. ~ Howard Thurman

There were long stretches where each of us was engaged in a private world of rapidly shifting vignettes. Always I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of human beings ebbing and flowing like the tides of the sea. ~ Howard Thurman

And this is the strangest of all paradoxes of the human adventure; we live inside all experience, but we are permitted to bear witness only to the outside. Such is the riddle of life and the story of the passing of our days. ~ Howard Thurman

What I have written is but a fleeting intimation of the outside of what one man sees and may tell about the path he walks. No one shares the secret of a life; no one enters into the heart of the mystery. ~ Howard Thurman

There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls. ~ Howard Thurman

A bigot is a person who makes an idol of his commitments. ~ Howard Thurman

Keep fresh before me the moments of my high resolve. ~ Howard Thurman

There must be always remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful. ~ Howard Thurman

[A] strange necessity has been laid upon me to devote my life to the central concern that transcends the walls that divide and would achieve in literal fact what is experienced as literal truth: human life is one and all men are members of one another. And this insight is spiritual and it is the hard core of religious experience. ~ Howard Thurman

Christmas is a mood, a quality, a symbol. It is never merely a fact. ~ Howard Thurman

There are two questions a man must ask himself: The first is 'Where am I going?' and the second is 'Who will go with me?'
If you ever get these questions in the wrong order you are in trouble. ~ Sam Keen

He who fears is literally delivered to destruction. ~ Howard Thurman

The years, the months, the days, and the hours have flown by my open window. Here and there an incident, a towering moment, a naked memory, an etched countenance, a whisper in the dark, a golden glow these and much more are the woven fabric of the time I have lived. ~ Howard Thurman

During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism. ~ Howard Thurman

Fear is one of the persistent hounds of hell that dog the footsteps of the poor, the dispossessed, the disinherited. There is nothing new or recent about fear - it is doubtless as old as the life of man on the planet. Fears are of many kinds - fear of objects, fear of people, fear of the future, fear of nature, fear of the unknown, fear of old age, fear of disease, and fear of life itself. Then there is fear which has to do with aspects of experience and detailed states of mind.

Our homes, institutions, prisons, churches, are crowded with people who are hounded by day and harrowed by night because of some fear that lurks ready to spring into action as soon as one is alone, or as soon as the lights go out, or as soon as one's social defenses are temporarily removed.

The ever-present fear that besets the vast poor, the economically and socially insecure, is a fear of still a different breed. It is a climate closing in; it is like the fog in San Francisco or in London. It is nowhere in particular yet everywhere. It is a mood which one carries around with himself, distilled from the acrid conflict with which his days are surrounded. It has its roots deep in the heart of the relations between the weak and the strong, between the controllers of environment and those who are controlled by it.

When the basis of such fear is analyzed, it is clear that it arises out of the sense of isolation and helplessness in the face of the varied dimensions of viole ~ Howard Thurman

It has long been a matter of serious moment that for decades we have studied the various peoples of the world and those who live as our neighbors as objects of missionary endeavor and enterprise without being at all willing to treat them either as brothers or as human beings. ~ Howard Thurman

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. ~ Howard Thurman

There is a quiet courage that comes from an inward spring of confidence in the meaning and significance of life. Such courage is an underground river, flowing far beneath the shifting events of one's experience, keeping alive a thousand little springs of action. ~ Howard Thurman

Life wears down the edges of the mind. ~ Howard Thurman

Twilight - a time of pause when nature changes her guard. All living things would fade and die from too much light or too much dark, if twilight were not. ~ Howard Thurman

Growth always involves the risk of failure. ~ Howard Thurman

Above and beyond all else it must be borne in mind that hatred tends to dry up the springs of creative thought in the life of the hater, so that his resourcefulness becomes completely focused on the negative aspects of his environment. The urgent needs of the personality for creative expression are starved to death. A man's horizon may become so completely dominated by the intense character of his hatred that there remains no creative residue in his mind and spirit to give to great ideas, to great concepts. ~ Howard Thurman

Follow the grain in your own wood ... ~ Howard Thurman

Keep alive the dream; for as long as a man has a dream in his heart, he cannot lose the significance of living. ~ Howard Thurman

If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection. ~ Howard Thurman

At the core of life is a hard purposefulness, a determination to live. ~ Howard Thurman

In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair. ~ Howard Thurman

There is a certain grandeur and nobility in administering to another's need out of one's fullness and plenty. One ~ Howard Thurman

Breaking a sweat through our difficulties minimized the likelihood of a crippling injury to our faith. ~ K. Howard Joslin

You're he best friend I've ever had. Even if things get screwed up, you'll find a way to help me. ~ A.G. Howard

And all of it seemed far away and long ago, along with the hard voices promising violence and the eyes bright with anger. ~ Howard Browne

God is still in the process of dispensing gifts, and He uses ordinary individuals like us to develop those gifts in other people ~ Howard G. Hendricks

It was Howard Hawks who changed my life. ~ Lauren Bacall

His face was like a law of nature - a thing one could not question, alter or implore. It had high cheekbones over gaunt, hollow cheeks; gray eyes, cold and steady; a contemptuous mouth, shut tight, the mouth of an executioner or a saint. ~ Ayn Rand

Cloud computing is actually a spectrum of things complementing one another and building on a foundation of sharing. Inherent dualities in the cloud computing phenomenon are spawning divergent strategies for cloud computing success. The public cloud, hybrid clouds, and private clouds now dot the landscape of IT based solutions. Because of that, the basic issues have moved from 'what is cloud' to 'how will cloud projects evolve'. ~ Chris Howard

If I just go out and play, the rest will take care of itself. That's what my parents taught me. They haven't been wrong yet. ~ Ryan Howard

Aristotle and Bacon can therefore be seen respectively as the grandfather and the father of the modern branch of the philosophy of science called "confirmation theory," that is, the study of how scientific hypotheses and theories are confirmed by evidence. Evidence clearly has a very significant bearing on the decisions of scientific communities to accept or reject certain theories, but spelling out the precise nature of that relationship is difficult ~ Howard Margolis

My view of Christianity is that the hallmark of being a Christian is to reach out to people who have been left behind. So I think there was a religious aspect to my decision to support civil unions. ~ Howard Dean

Where was the excitement it dependability? Where was the spontaneity in a predictable world? He could offer her an eternity of challenges and passion, of quiet, tender moments stolen in the depths of riotous flames and ravaging storms - tranquillity amidst the chaos. ~ A.G. Howard

Remember: blonde, brunette, and redhead are not personality types. ~ Howard Mittelmark

Ignorant people remain ignorant because they have a secret agreement to call one another intelligent. ~ Vernon Howard

Human sickness is so severe that few can bear to look at it ... but those who do will become well. ~ Vernon Howard

Rules of conduct which govern men in their relations to one another are being applied in an ever-increasing degree to nations. The battlefield as a place of settlement of disputes is gradually yielding to arbitral courts of justice. ~ William Howard Taft

Keep your head up. Keep your heart strong ~ Ben Howard

Oh, that's great. That way, when things have quieted down, and we come up for air, or money, or re-supply, we'll get a nice explosive package from him that says "so nice to see you again" in a way that only multi-megaton yields can. ~ Howard Tayler

We won't always have the strongest military. ~ Howard Dean

There is nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitor. ~ Frank Howard Clark

Alyssa, you've been given a chance at two lives and two loves. That is nothing short of a miracle. Cherish the gift for what it is. I shall see you soon, in Wonderland. ~ A.G. Howard

It was early autumn, then, before the snow began to fly. –(There's an expression for you, born in the country, born from the imaginations of men and their feeling for the right word, the only word, to mirror clearly what they see! Those with few words must know how to use them.) Men who have seen it, who have watched it day by day outside their cabin window coming down from the sky, like the visible remorse of an ageing year; who have watched it bead upon the ears of the horses they rode, muffle the sound of hoofs on the trail, lie upon spruce boughs and over grass – cover, as if forever, the landscape in which they moved, round off the mountains, blanket the ice in the rivers – for them the snow flies. The snow doesn't fall. It may ride the wind. It may descend slowly, in utter quiet, from the grey and laden clouds, so that you can hear the flakes touching lightly on the wide white waste, as they come to rest at the end of their flight. Flight – that's the word. They beat in the air like wings, as if reluctant ever to touch the ground. I have observed them coming down, on a very cold day, near its end when the sky above me was still blue, in flakes great and wide as the palm of my hand. They were like immense moths winging down in the twilight, making the silence about me visible. ~ Howard O'Hagan

In 1992, teachers all over the country, by the thousands, were beginning to teach the Columbus story in new ways, to recognize that to Native Americans, Columbus and his men were not heroes, but marauders. The point being not just to revise our view of past events, but to be provoked to think about today. ~ Howard Zinn

No, we discuss it as fans. When we see the game, we talk about what we thought was a call or a foul or no foul. We just have to deal with that in the game. There's gonna be plenty more of those. Referees are humans, so it's not a problem. ~ Tim Howard

But when it comes to applied sciences, technologies, any spotty Herbert with a degree and a lab coat can perform greater wonders than Merlin. ~ Jonathan L. Howard

Lesson one: expect to get screwed over for the convenience of others on a regular basis. ~ Jonathan L. Howard

A National Government cannot create good times. It cannot make the rain to fall, the sun to shine, or the crops to grow, but it can, by pursuing a meddlesome policy, attempting to change economic conditions, and frightening the investment of capital, prevent a prosperity and a revival of business which might otherwise have taken place. ~ William Howard Taft

If so, then we must conclude that scientists do not understand the meaning of their own theories and must wait for historians like Kuhn to enlighten them! Such a claim appears arrogant, to say the least, and imposes a burden of proof on Kuhn and other defenders of incommensurability that they have not met. So, ~ Howard Margolis

I became a writer in spite of my environments. ~ Robert E. Howard

The biggest thing is always being around people that are going to lift you up and not bring you down. That's why I prayed for God to send me some good friends. He's done that. I don't really have a lot of friends, but the friends I do have are great. ~ Dwight Howard

I don't believe in premarital sex. It enabled me to date three or four women at the same time, because as long as I wasn't having sex with them, I could always just walk away. ~ Terrence Howard

To find out what we presently are and where we are going, we must know what we have been and what others have done; and this, because the humanities are at once the creation and the interpreters of the past, is the great purpose of humanistic scholarship. ~ Howard Mumford Jones

I will never reach the success that my dad has felt. ~ Bryce Dallas Howard

One morning just after Joe had left to drive to his class, Mary walked out to the barn and reflected on her state of hussiness. All in all, she was satisfied with it. Being a hussy had its advantages. ~ Linda Howard

You still love me."
"Every fucking second I breathe. I will love you the rest of my life, December Howard, whether or not you're around to witness it. ~ Rebecca Yarros

On the whole, yes, I would rather be the Chief Justice of the United States, and a quieter life than that which becomes at the White House is more in keeping with the temperament, but when taken into consideration that I go into history as President, and my children and my children's children are the better placed on account of that fact, I am inclined to think that to be President well compensates one for all the trials and criticisms he has to bear and undergo. ~ William Howard Taft

There are...emotions, traumas, and transitions in every family that faces don't reflect and film doesn't capture. (255) ~ Howard Swindle

Why are stamps adorned with kings and presidents? That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads. ~ Howard Nemerov

Loving ourselves is not some frothy sentiment. Nor is it an egotistical self-centerdness. It is obedience, obedience to the commandments of God that have to do with self. ~ J. Grant Howard

[T]eaching has been for me an education (Lord knows what it has been for my students). ~ Howard Nemerov

Salvador [Dali] was brought up in Spain, a country colored by the legends of Hannibal, El Greco, and Cervantes. I was brought up in Ohio, a region steeped in the tradition of Coxey's Army, the Anti-Saloon League, and William Howard Taft. ~ James Thurber

Will you come with me, sweet Reader? I thank you. Give me your hand. ~ Howard Pyle

Holidays were invented so single women could overeat without feeling guilty. ~ Elizabeth Jane Howard

The [commercial] strip is marketed with the come-on of comfort (the Comfort Inn) and with the promise of a home on the road, a home where nobody knows your name and they're glad to see you as long as you can pay. The strip lives in the contradiction of the name Home Depot - domesticity on a gargantuan scale. Home - "a person's native place," "at ease," "deep; to the heart," says the dictionary, and Depot, "a storehouse or a 'warehouse.'" (Warehouse of the Heart?) ~ Howard Mansfield

It was brief, swift, and then it was done. It was a professional job. I needed to be kissed, and I was kissed. ~ Uma Thurman