Quotes by Harry Emerson Fosdick

“Dont simply retire from something; have something to retire to.”

“The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off.”

“When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces. Women go right on cooking.”

“Age is only a number, a cipher for the records. A man cant retire his experience. He must use it. Experience achieves more with less energy and time.”

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

“The primal principle of democracy is the worth and dignity of the individual”

“The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.”

“Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.”

“Religion is not a burden, not a weight, it is wings”

“Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it”

“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.”

“Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sours life; love sweetens it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Bitterness blinds life; love anoints its eyes.”

“Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.”

“Rebellion against your handicaps gets you nowhere. Self-pity gets you nowhere. One must have the adventurous daring to accept oneself as a bundle of possibilities and undertake the most interesting game in the world - making the most of ones best.”

“Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.”

“He who cannot rest, cannot work; he who cannot let go, cannot hold on; he who cannot find footing, cannot go forward.”

“Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.”

The most extraordinary thing about the oyster is this. Irritation gets into his shell. He does not like them. But when he cannot get rid of them he uses the irritation to do the lovelist thing an oyster ever has the chance to do. If there are irritations in our lives today, there is only one prescription: make a pearl. It may have to be a pearl of patience, but…make a pearl.-In the Treasure Chest, ed. Charles L. Wallis

No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. 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 great until it is focused dedicated disciplined.

Christians are supposed not merely to endure change nor even to profit by it but to cause it.