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Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

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Harry Emerson Fosdick
Age: 91 †
Born: 1878
Born: May 24
Died: 1969
Died: October 5
Author
Preacher
Theologian
Writer
Buffalo
New York
H. E. Fosdick
Based
Ordinary
Possibility
Democracy
Freedom
Possibilities
Upon
Diversity
People
Conviction
Extraordinary

More quotes by Harry Emerson Fosdick

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He is a poor patriot whose patriotism does not enable him to understand how all men everywhere feel about their altars and their hearthstones, their flag and their fatherland.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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One of the most amazing things ever said on this earth is Jesus's statement: He that is greatest among you shall be your servant. Nobody has one chance in a billion of being thought really great after a century has passed except those who have been the servants of all. That strange realist from Bethlehem knew that.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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He is a poor son whose sonship does not make him desire to serve all men's mothers.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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What a testing of character adversity is.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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Nothing else matters much...not wealth, nor learning, nor even health...without this gift: the spiritual capacity to keep zest in living. This is the creed of creeds, the final deposit and distillation of all important faiths: that you should be able to believe in life.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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No man is the whole of himself his friends are the rest of him.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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The all but unanimous judgment seems to be that we, the democracies, are just as responsible for the rise of the dictators as the dictatorships themselves, and perhaps more so.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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Divinity is not something supernatural that ever and again invades the natural order in a crashing miracle. Divinity is not in some remote heaven, seated on a throne. Divinity is love. . . . Wherever goodness, beauty, truth, love, are-there is the divine.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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Always take a job that is too big for you.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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Whatever you laugh at in others, laughs at yourself
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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Every great scientist becomes a great scientist because of the inner self-abnegation with which he stands before truth, saying: Not my will, but thine, be done. What, then, does a man mean by saying, Science displaces religion, when in this deep sense science itself springs from religion?
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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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
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The process has now run full circle: Preaching originates in personal counseling preaching is personal counseling on a group basis personal counseling originates in preaching. Personal counseling imparts to the preacher a practical familiarity with human nature which he would not otherwise obtain.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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While each of us ... has depressed hours, none of us needs to be a depressed person.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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My friends, nothing in all the world is so much worth thinking of as God, Christ, the Bible, sin and salvation, the divine purposes for humankind, life everlasting. But you cannot challenge the dedicated thinking of this generation to these sublime themes upon any such terms as are laid down by an intolerant church.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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A good sermon is an engineering operation by which a chasm is bridged so that the spiritual goods on one side-the 'unsearchable riches of Christ' - are actually transported into personal lives upon the other.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
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Democracy is not simply a political system it is a moral movement and it springs from adventurous faith in human possibilities.
Harry Emerson Fosdick