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By what sort of experience are we led to the conviction that spirit exists? On the whole, by searching, painful experience. The rose Religion grows on a thorn-bush, and we must not be afraid to have our fingers lacerated by the thorns if we would pluck the rose.

Felix Adler

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Felix Adler
Age: 81 †
Born: 1851
Born: August 13
Died: 1933
Died: April 24
Educator
Philosopher
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Madrid
Spain
Would
Afraid
Thorns
Sort
Searching
Grows
Bush
Religion
Conviction
Experience
Exists
Spirit
Fingers
Lacerated
Whole
Painful
Thorn
Must
Rose
Pluck

More quotes by Felix Adler

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The office of the public teacher is an unenviable and thankless one.
Felix Adler
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Few are there that will leave the secure seclusion of the scholar's life, the peaceful walks of literature and learning, to stand out a target for the criticism of unkind and hostile minds.
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The unique personality which is the real life in me, I can not gain unless I search for the real life, the spiritual quality, in others. I am myself spiritually dead unless I reach out to the fine quality dormant in others. For it is only with the god enthroned in the innermost shrine of the other, that the god hidden in me, will consent to appear.
Felix Adler
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It is the moral element contained in it that alone gives value and dignity to a religion, and only in so far as its teachings serve to stimulate and purify our moral aspirations does it deserve to retain its ascendency over mankind.
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We stand, as it were, on the shore, and see multitudes of our fellow beings struggling in the water, stretching forth their arms, sinking, drowning, and we are powerless to assist them.
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To care for anyone else enough to make their problems one's own, is ever the beginning of one's real ethical development.
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The truth which has made us free will in the end make us glad also. Every outcry against the oppression of some people by other people, or against what is morally hideous is the affirmation of the principle that a human being as such is not to be violated. A human being is not to be handled as a tool but is to be respected and revered.
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Act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in thyself.
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Man is like a tree, with the mighty trunk of intellect, the spreading branches of imagination, and the roots of the lower instincts that bind him to the earth. The moral life, however, is the fruit he bears in it his true nature is revealed.
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If you desire information on some point of law, you are not likely to ponder over the ponderous tomes of legal writers in order to obtain the knowledge you seek, by your own unaided efforts.
Felix Adler
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It is our hope, that men in proportion as they grow more enlightened, will learn to hold their theories and their creeds more loosely, and will none the less, nay, rather all the more be devoted to the supreme end of practical righteousness to which all theories and creeds must be kept subservient.
Felix Adler
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It may be impossible for a man by merely willing it to add wings to his body, but it is possible for any man, by merely willing it, to add wings to his soul. This perennial miracle of the moral nature is capable of happening at any time.
Felix Adler
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In order to join vigorously in the moral work of the world I must believe that somehow the best I can accomplish will endure, will leave its trace on things, will aid the final consummation.
Felix Adler
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The freedom of thought is a sacred right of every individual man, and diversity will continue to increase with the progress, refinement, and differentiation of the human intellect.
Felix Adler
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Simplicity should not be identified with bareness.
Felix Adler
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No one can fail to see that the power of the Church among large numbers in many communities is today diminishing, or has already ceased.
Felix Adler
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The family is the school of duties - founded on love.
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As the light of morning strikes now one peak and then another, some being illuminated while others are in the shadow, so the light of the essential moral principle shines now upon one duty and then upon another, while others are in the shadow.
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For more than three thousand years men have quarreled concerning the formulas of their faith. The earth has been drenched with blood shed in this cause, the face of day darkened with the blackness of the crimes perpetrated in its name.
Felix Adler
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Act so as to encourage the best in others, and by so doing you will develop the best in yourself.
Felix Adler