Harry Emerson Fosdick
Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969) American clergyman, b. Buffalo, N.Y., graduated from Colgate University, 1900, and Union Theological Seminary, 1904. Ordained a Baptist minister in 1903. Fosdick was the most prominent liberal baptist minister of the early 20th Century. He was Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church on West Twelth Street and then at historic Riverside Church (formerly Park Avenue Baptist Church) in New York City.
12 Quotes
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.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
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.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
A person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
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.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
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.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
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.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick
Our power is not so much in us as through us.
— Harry Emerson Fosdick