Harry Emerson Fosdick Quotes

49 Sourced Quotes

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 the place of democracy, for the starvation that stalks after it.

Harry Emerson Fosdick
War's tragedy is that it uses man's best to do man's worst.

Harry Emerson Fosdick
Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack, and subconsciously, beneath their condescension, deeply wish they had.

Harry Emerson Fosdick
Every human life involves an unfathomable mystery, for man is the riddle of the universe, and the riddle of man is his endowment with personal capacities. The stars are not so strange as the mind that studies them, analyzes their light, and measures their distances.

Harry Emerson Fosdick
No man is the whole of himself; his friends are the rest of him.

Harry Emerson Fosdick
Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.

Harry Emerson Fosdick
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.

Harry Emerson Fosdick
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,
Lest we miss Thy kingdom's goal,
Lest we miss Thy kingdom's goal.

Harry Emerson Fosdick
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.

Harry Emerson Fosdick
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.

Harry Emerson Fosdick
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.

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

Harry Emerson Fosdick
He who cannot rest, cannot work; he who cannot let go, cannot hold on; he who cannot find footing, cannot go forward.

Harry Emerson Fosdick
Some Christians carry their religion on their backs. It is a packet of beliefs and practices which they must bear. At times it grows heavy and they would willingly lay it down, but that would mean a break with old traditions, so they shoulder it again. But real Christians do not carry their religion, their religion carries them. It is not weight, it is wings. It lifts them up, it sees them over hard places. It makes the universe seem friendly, life purposeful, hope real, sacrifice worthwhile. It sets them free from fear, futility, discouragement, and sin — the great enslaver of men's souls. You can know a real Christian when you see him, by his bouyancy.

Harry Emerson Fosdick
Peace is an awareness of reserves from beyond ourselves, so that our power is not so much in us as through us. Peace is the gift, not of volitional struggle, but of spiritual hospitality.

Harry Emerson Fosdick
God is not a cosmic bell-boy for whom we can press a button to get things done.

Harry Emerson Fosdick
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.

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

Harry Emerson Fosdick
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.

Harry Emerson Fosdick