Harry Allen Overstreet Quotes

To hate and to fear is to be psychologically ill. It is in fact the consuming illness of our time.

The very essence of all power to influence lies in getting the other person to participate. The mind that can do that has a powerful leverage on his human world.

The mature mind seeks to follow through.

The happiest thing that can be said about democracy... is that it is one of the few systems that has been willing to risk a long period of confusion and mixed purposes for the sake of giving man a chance to grow up in mind and responsibility.

Better a dish of illusion and a hearty appetite for life than a feast of reality and indigestion therewith.

Sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, and love belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality.

A person remains immature, whatever his age, as long as he thinks of himself as an exception to the human race.

Goodness is a special kind of truth and beauty. It is truth and beauty in human behavior.

The immature mind hops from one thing to another; the mature mind seeks to follow through.

Time the devourer of everything.

Recreation is not a secondary concern for a democracy. It is a primary concern, for the kind of recreation a people make for themselves determines the kind of people they become and the kind of society they build.

The secret of all true persuasion is to induce the person to persuade himself.

I may safely predict that the education of the future will be inventive-minded. It will believe so profoundly in the high value of the inventive or creative spirit that it will set itself to develop that spirit by all means within its power.

The average citizen expresses pride in the American Bill of Rights and then seeks to protect his real estate by restrictive covenants.

Newspapers have developed what might be called a vested interest in catastrophe. If they can spot a fight, they play up that fight. If they can uncover a tragedy, they will headline that tragedy.

One of the most important phases of maturing is that of growth from self-centering to an understanding relationship to others. A person is not mature until he has both an ability and a willingness to see himself as one among others and to do unto those others as he would have them do to him.

If minds are truly alive they will seek out books, for books are the human race recounting its memorable experiences, confronting its problems, searching for solutions, drawing the blueprints of it futures.