Harry Emerson Fosdick

Who was Harry Emerson Fosdick?

"Harry Emerson Fosdick" was an American pastor. Fosdick became a central figure in the "Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy" within American Protestantism in the 1920's and 1930's and was one of the most prominent liberal ministers of the early 20th Century. Although a Baptist, he was guest preacher in New York City at First Presbyterian Church on West Twelfth Street, Manhattan and then at the historic, inter-denominational Riverside Church, founded by philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr.

Famous Quotes:

• Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.
• Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
• 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.
• Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Our power is not so much in us as through us.
• He who chooses the beginning of a road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determine the end.
• 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.