Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969)Harry Emerson Fosdick, who was ordained a Baptist minister in 1903 at the Madison Avenue Baptist Church, was the most prominent liberal Baptist minister of the early 20th Century. Fosdick, a graduate from Colgate University, Union Theological Seminary(NY) and Columbia University, served as Riverside's first senior minister, 1930–46, and established an openness to diversity and strong progressive policy.
Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it.
Christians are supposed not merely to endure change, nor even to profit by it, but to cause it.
God has put within our lives meanings and possibilities that quite outrun the limits of mortality.
God is not a cosmic bellboy for whom we can press a button to get things.
Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.
He who cannot rest, cannot work; he who cannot let go, cannot hold on; he who cannot find footing, cannot go forward.
He who chooses the beginning of the road chooses the place it leads to. It is the means that determines the end.
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.
It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
Life asks not merely what you can do; it asks how much can you endure and not be spoiled.
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.
Preaching is personal counseling on a group basis.
Religion is not a burden, not a weight, it is wings.
The steady discipline of intimate friendship with Jesus results in men becoming like Him.
The tragedy of war is that it uses man's best to do man's worst.
The world is moving so fast these days that the one who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.
