Harry Emerson Fosdick Quotes

1878–1969, American Minister
quotes
12
topics
12
Origin
Topic
“Our power is not so much in us as through us.”
VerifiedOn Being Fit to Live With : Sermons on Post-War Christianity (1946) · evidencePower
“A person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.”
VerifiedA very similar statement has become attributed to Benjamin Franklin, but apparently only in recent decades: "A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle." This seems to have been first attributed to Franklin in The New Age Magazine Vol. 66 (1958) · evidenceConceit
“Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.”
Liberty
“Hating people is like burning down your own home to get rid of a rat.”
VerifiedAs I See Religion (1932) · evidenceHatred
“Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.”
Change
“Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.”
Democracy
“He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end.”
VerifiedLiving Under Tension (1941) · evidenceChoice
“To keep the Golden Rule we must put ourselves in other people's places, but to do that consists in and depends upon picturing ourselves in their places.”
Neighbors
“No steam or gas ever drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.”
Action
“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.”
Adversity
“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. Great living starts with a picture, held in your imagination, of what you would like to do or be.”
Imagination
“The Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea are made of the same water. It flows down, clean and cool, from the heights of Herman and the roots of the cedars of Lebanon. the Sea of Galilee makes beauty of it, the Sea of Galilee has an outlet. It gets to give. It gathers in its riches that it may pour them out again to fertilize the Jordan plain. But the Dead Sea with the same water makes horror. For the Dead Sea has no outlet. It gets to keep.”
Death and Dying