Harry Emerson Fosdick quotes - page 2

Harry Emerson Fosdick was an influential American pastor and theologian, recognized for his role in the early 20th-century liberal Christianity movement. As a prominent preacher, his sermons addressed social issues and promoted tolerance and understanding among Christians. He became known for his advocacy of religious modernism and support for social justice. Here are 62 of his quotes:

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

Harry Emerson Fosdick

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.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

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

Harry Emerson Fosdick

I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

We cannot all be great, but we can always attach ourselves to something that it great.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

The world is moving so fast these days that the one who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

Religion is not a burden, not a weight, it is wings.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

Whatever you laugh at in others, laughs at yourself.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

It is magnificent to grow old, if one keeps young.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

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.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

It is not marriage that fails; it is people that fail. All that marriage does is to show people up.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

Happiness is not mostly pleasure, it is mostly victory.

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

Atheism is a theoretical formulation of the discouraged life.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

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

Harry Emerson Fosdick

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.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

Opinions may be mistaken; love never is.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

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.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

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

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

Nothing in this world is more inspiring than a soul up against crippling circumstances who carries it off with courage and faith and undefeated characternothing See Light From Many Lamps, edited by L. E. Watson, article by H. E. Fosdick, pp. 93-94 re a serious cripple who succeeded.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

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

Harry Emerson Fosdick