Famous Harry Emerson Fosdick Quotes

Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick

Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick

Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick

Don't simply retire from something; have something to retire to.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick

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.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick

God is not a cosmic bell-boy for whom we can press a button to get things done.
-- 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

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.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick

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.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick

Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick

Life consists not simply in what heredity and environment do to us but in what we make out of what they do to us.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick

The men of faith might claim for their positions ancient tradition, practical usefulness, and spiritual desirability, but one query could prick all such bubbles: Is it scientific? That question has searched religion for contraband goods, stripped it of old superstitions, forced it to change its categories of thought and methods of work, and in general has so cowed and scared religion that many modern-minded believers... instinctively throw up their hands at the mere whisper of it... When a prominent scientist comes out strongly for religion, all the churches thank Heaven and take courage, as though it were the highest possible compliment to God to have Eddington believe in Him. Science has become the arbiter of this generation's thought, until to call even a prophet and a seer 'scientific' is to cap the climax of praise.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick