Howard Thurman
12 quotes
Biography
Howard Washington Thurman was an American author, philosopher, minister, theologian, Christian mystic, educator, and civil rights leader.
"A dream is the bearer of a new possibility, the enlarged horizon, the great hope."
"Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
"The movement of the Spirit of God in the hearts of men and women often calls them to act against the spirit of their times or causes them to anticipate a spirit which is yet in the making. In a moment of dedication they are given wisdom and courage to dare a deed that challenges and to kindle a hope that inspires."
"Prayer is a form of communication between God and man and man and God….I am always impressed by the fact that it is recorded that the only thing that the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to do was to pray.""
"In the conflicts between man and man, between group and group, between nation and nation, the loneliness of the seeker for community is sometimes unendurable. The radical tension between good and evil, as man sees it and feels it, does not have the last word about the meaning of life and the nature of existence. There is a spirit in man and in the world working always against the thing that destroys and lays waste. Always he must know that the contradictions of life are not final or ultimate; he must distinguish between failure and a many-sided awareness so that he will not mistake conformity for harmony, uniformity for synthesis. He will know that for all men to be alike is the death of life in man, and yet perceive harmony that transcends all diversities and in which diversity finds its richness and significance."
"Community cannot feed for long on itself; it can only flourish where always the boundaries are giving way to the coming of others from beyond them — unknown and undiscovered brothers."
"There were long stretches where each of us was engaged in a private world of rapidly shifting vignettes. Always I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of human beings ebbing and flowing like the tides of the sea."
"The measure of a man's estimate of your strength is the kind of weapons he feels that he must use in order to hold you fast in a prescribed place."
"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."
"During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism."
"During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism."
"The years, the months, the days, and the hours have flown by my open window. Here and there an incident, a towering moment, a naked memory, an etched countenance, a whisper in the dark, a golden glow these and much more are the woven fabric of the time I have lived."