Harry Emerson Fosdick Quotes
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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.
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Whatever you laugh at in others, laughs at yourself
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Real Christians do not carry their religion, their religion carries them. It is not weight, it is wings.
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Prayer opens our lives for God so his will can be done in and through us, because in true prayer we habitually put ourselves into the attitude of willingness to do whatever God wills.
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God is not a cosmic bellboy for whom we can press a button to get things.
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All intelligent faith in God has behind it a background of humble agnosticism.
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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.
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Religion is something that only secondarily can be taught. It must must primarily be taught.
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It is cynicism and fear that freeze life; it is faith that thaws it out, releases it, sets it free.
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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?
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I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses.
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No character is ultimately tested until it has suffered.
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Every year the inventions of science weave more inextricably the web that binds man to man, group to group, nation to nation.
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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.
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Of all mad faiths maddest is the faith that we can get rid of faith.
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Preaching is personal counseling on a group basis.
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No one can be wrong with man and right with God.
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Don't simply retire from something; have something to retire to.
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Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.
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No man need stay the way he is.
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All altruism springs from putting yourself in the other person's place.
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Happiness is not mostly pleasure, it is mostly victory.
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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.
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One could almost phrase the motto of our modern civilization thus: Science is my shepherd; I shall not want.
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He who cannot rest, cannot work; he who cannot let go, cannot hold on; he who cannot find footing, cannot go forward.
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We must take the abiding spiritual values which inhere in the deep experiences of religion in all ages and give them new expression in terms of the framework which our new knowledge gives us. Science forces religion to deal with new ideas in the theoretical realm and new forces in the practical realm.
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Our power is not so much in us as through us.
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The stars are not so strange as the mind that studies them, analyzes their light, and measures their distance.
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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.
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No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.
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