William Ernest Hocking - Man Quotes

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I find that a man is as old as his work. If his work keeps him from moving forward, he will look forward with the work.

William Ernest Hocking
Only the man who has enough good in him to feel the justice of the penalty can be punished; the others can only be hurt.

William Ernest Hocking
Man is the only animal that contemplates death, and also the only animal that shows any sign of doubt of its finality. This does not mean that he doubts it as a future fact. He accepts his own death, with that of others, as inevitable; plans for it; provides for the time when he shall be out of the picture. Yet, not less today than formerly, he confronts this fact with a certain incredulity regarding the scope of its destruction.

William Ernest Hocking
And indeed, no man has found his religion until he has found that for which he must sell his goods and his life.

William Ernest Hocking
Without good-will, no man has any presumptive right, except the right or opportunity to change his will, so long as there is hope of it.

William Ernest Hocking
Wherever moral ambition exists, there right exists.
And moral ambition itself must be presumed present in subconsciousness, even when the conscious self seems to reject it, so long as society has resources for bringing it into action; in much the same way that the life-saver presumes life to exist in the drowned man until he has exhausted his resources for recovering respiration.

William Ernest Hocking
For maturity is marked by the preference to be defeated rather than have a subjective success. We as mature persons can worship only that which we are compelled to worship. If we are offered a man-made God and a self-answering prayer, we will rather have no God and no prayer. There can be no valid worship except that in which man is involuntarily bent by the presence of the Most Real, beyond his will.

William Ernest Hocking