Howard Thurman quotes

During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism. (Howard Thurman)
Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. View quote
Howard Thurman
There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls. View quote
Howard Thurman
Community cannot for long feed on itself; it can only flourish with the coming of others from beyond, their unknown and undiscovered brothers. View quote
Howard Thurman
The measure of a man's estimate of your strength is the kind of weapons he feels that he must use in order to hold you fast in a prescribed place. View quote
Howard Thurman
Commitment means that it is possible for a man to yield the nerve center of his consent to a purpose or cause, a movement or an ideal, which may be more important to him than whether he lives or dies. View quote
Howard Thurman
A dream is the bearer of a new possibility, the enlarged horizon, the great hope. View quote
Howard Thurman
Prayer is a form of communication between God and man and man and God.... I am always impressed by the fact that it is recorded that the only thing that the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to do was to pray. View quote
Howard Thurman
There were long stretches where each of us was engaged in a private world of rapidly shifting vignettes. Always I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of human beings ebbing and flowing like the tides of the sea. View quote
Howard Thurman
The movement of the Spirit of God in the hearts of men and women often calls them to act against the spirit of their times or causes them to anticipate a spirit which is yet in the making. In a moment of dedication they are given wisdom and courage to dare a deed that challenges and to kindle a hope that inspires. View quote
Howard Thurman
Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace. (Howard Thurman)
Follow the grain in your own wood. View quote
Howard Thurman
Jesus rejected hatred because he saw that hatred meant death to the mind, death to the spirit, and death to communion with his Father. He affirmed life; and hatred was the great denial. View quote
Howard Thurman
There must be always remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful. View quote
Howard Thurman
The radical tension between good and evil, as man sees it and feels it, does not have the last word about the meaning of life and the nature of existence. There is a spirit in man and in the world working always against the thing that destroys and lays waste. View quote
Howard Thurman
If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection. View quote
Howard Thurman
He who fears is literally delivered to destruction. View quote
Howard Thurman
At the core of life is a hard purposefulness, a determination to live. View quote
Howard Thurman
Twilight - a time of pause when nature changes her guard. All living things would fade and die from too much light or too much dark, if twilight were not. View quote
Howard Thurman
keep fresh before me the moments of my high resolve. View quote
Howard Thurman
And this is the strangest of all paradoxes of the human adventure; we live inside all experience, but we are permitted to bear witness only to the outside. Such is the riddle of life and the story of the passing of our days. (Howard Thurman)
Often, to be free means the ability to deal with the realities of one's own situation so as not to be overcome by them. View quote
Howard Thurman
Community cannot feed for long on itself; it can only flourish where always the boundaries are giving way to the coming of others from beyond them - unknown and undiscovered brothers. View quote
Howard Thurman
Where refugees seek deliverance that never comes And the heart consumes itself as if it would live, Where children age before their time And life wears down the edges of the mind, Where the old man sits with mind grown cold, While bones and sinew, blood and cell, go slowly down to death, Where fear companions each day's life, And Perfect Love seems long delayed. CHRISTMAS IS WAITING TO BE BORN: In you, in me, in all mankind. View quote
Howard Thurman
When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flock, The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among people, To make music in the heart. View quote
Howard Thurman