Harry Emerson Fosdick Quotes

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?

The most extraordinary thing about the oyster is this. Irritations set into his shell. He does not like them. But when he cannot get ride of them, he uses the irritation to do the loveliest thing an oyster ever has a chance to do. If there are irritations in our lives today, there is only one prescription: make a pearl. It may have to be a pearl of patience, but anyhow, make a pearl. And it takes faith and I love to do it.

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.

My friends, nothing in all the world is so much worth thinking of as God, Christ, the Bible, sin and salvation, the divine purposes for humankind, life everlasting. But you cannot challenge the dedicated thinking of this generation to these sublime themes upon any such terms as are laid down by an intolerant church.

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

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.

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

Opinions may be mistaken; love never is.

What a testing of character adversity is.

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

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.

I hate war... for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it.

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.

Of all mad faiths maddest is the faith that we can get rid of faith.

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.

No man need stay the way he is.

The steady discipline of intimate friendship with Jesus results in men becoming like Him.

The first question to be answered by any individual or by any social group, The real handle facing a hazardous sit - to a difficult uation, is whether the stuaton crisis is to be met as a challenge to strength or as an occasion for despair.

Our power is not so much in us as through us.

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

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

One of the most amazing things ever said on this earth is Jesus's statement: "He that is greatest among you shall be your servant." Nobody has one chance in a billion of being thought really great after a century has passed except those who have been the servants of all. That strange realist from Bethlehem knew that.

Money is a miraculous thing. It is your personal energy reduced to a portable form and endowed with power you yourself do not possess. It can go where you cannot go; speak languages you cannot speak; lift burdens you cannot touch with your fingers; save lives with which you cannot deal directly.

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

Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.

No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it.

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.

Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it.

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.

No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it.--Harry Emerson FosdickNo one can get inner peace by pouncing on it.

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

Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind's eye and you will be drawn toward it. Picture yourself vividly as winning and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success.

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

We ask the leaf, "Are you complete in yourself?" And the leaf answers, "No, my life is in the branches." We ask the branch, and the branch answers, "No my life is in the root." We ask the root, and it answers, "No my life is in the trunk and the branches and the leaves. Keep the branches stripped of leaves, and I shall die," So it is with the great tree of being. Nothing is completely and merely individual.

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

God has put within our lives meanings and possibilities that quite outrun the limits of mortality.

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

It is going to be a long, hard haul; it will require patience, courage, faith that hangs on when hope fails, if we are to tame the rude barbarity of man, so that the atomic age becomes a blessing, not a curse. There never was such a day for the Christian gospel. God help us all in these years ahead to make that gospel live in men and nations!

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

No character is ultimately tested until it has suffered.

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.

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

Religion is something that only secondarily can be taught. It must must primarily be taught.

Great living starts with a picture, held in your imagination, of what you would like to do or be.

Every failure can be considered as a tragedy or a chance to learn something. The latter is healthier

The stars are not so strange as the mind that studies them, analyzes their light, and measures their distance.

It is cynicism and fear that freeze life; it is faith that thaws it out, releases it, sets it free.

Atheism is a theoretical formulation of the discouraged life.