Howard Thurman Quotes & Sayings

If a man is convinced that he is safe only as long as he uses his power to give others a sense of insecurity, then the measure of their security is in his hands. If security or insecurity is at the mercy of a single individual or group, then control of behavior becomes routine. All imperialism functions in this way. — Howard Thurman

Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. — Howard Thurman

Listen to the long stillness:
New life is stirring
New dreams are on the wing
New hopes are being readied:
Humankind is fashioning a new heart
Humankind is forging a new mind
God is at work.
This is the season of Promise — Howard Thurman

I will light candles this Christmas, Candles of joy, despite all sadness, Candles of hope where despair keeps watch. Candles of courage where fear is ever present, Candles of peace for tempest-tossed days, Candles of grace to ease heavy burdens. Candles of love to inspire all my living, Candles that will burn all the year long. — Howard Thurman

Fate is the raw materials of experience. They come uninvited and often unanticipated. Destiny is what a man does with these raw materials. — Howard Thurman

Christmas is a mood, a quality, a symbol. It is never merely a fact. — Howard Thurman

There are two questions that we have to ask ourselves. The first is 'Where am I going?' and the second is 'Who will go with me?' — Howard Thurman

There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls. — Howard Thurman

[A] strange necessity has been laid upon me to devote my life to the central concern that transcends the walls that divide and would achieve in literal fact what is experienced as literal truth: human life is one and all men are members of one another. And this insight is spiritual and it is the hard core of religious experience. — Howard Thurman

He who fears is literally delivered to destruction. — Howard Thurman

I say that creeds, dogmas, and theologies are inventions of the mind. It is the nature of the mind to make sense out of experience, to reduce the conglomerates of experience to units of comprehension which we call principles, or ideologies, or concepts. Religious experience is dynamic, fluid, effervescent, yeasty. But the mind can't handle these so it has to imprison religious experience in some way, get it bottled up. Then, when the experience quiets down, the mind draws a bead on it and extracts concepts, notions, dogmas, so that religious experience can make sense to the mind. — Howard Thurman

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. — Howard Thurman

In the presence of an overwhelming sincerity on the part of the disinherited, the dominant themselves are caught with no defense [ ... ] They are thrown back upon themselves for their rating. — Howard Thurman

A bigot is a person who makes an idol of his commitments. — Howard Thurman

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. — Howard Thurman

Growth always involves the risk of failure. — Howard Thurman

It cannot be denied that too often the weight of the Christian movement has been on the side of the strong and the powerful and against the weak and oppressed-this, despite the gospel. — Howard Thurman

What the world need is people who have come alive. — Howard Thurman

In the stillness of the quiet, if we listen, we can hear the whisper of the heart giving strength to weakness, courage to fear, hope to despair. — Howard Thurman

In whatever sense this year is a new year for you, may the moment find you eager and unafraid, ready to take it by the hand with joy and gratitude. — Howard Thurman

To love is to make of one's heart a swinging door. — Howard Thurman

Above and beyond all else it must be borne in mind that hatred tends to dry up the springs of creative thought in the life of the hater, so that his resourcefulness becomes completely focused on the negative aspects of his environment. The urgent needs of the personality for creative expression are starved to death. A man's horizon may become so completely dominated by the intense character of his hatred that there remains no creative residue in his mind and spirit to give to great ideas, to great concepts. — Howard Thurman

There is a quiet courage that comes from an inward spring of confidence in the meaning and significance of life. Such courage is an underground river, flowing far beneath the shifting events of one's experience, keeping alive a thousand little springs of action. — Howard Thurman

During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism. — Howard Thurman

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. — Howard Thurman

Often, to be free means the ability to deal with the realities of one's own situation so as not to be overcome by them. — Howard Thurman

Follow the grain in your own wood ... — Howard Thurman

A dream is the bearer of a new possibility, the enlarged horizon, the great hope. — Howard Thurman

If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under subjection. — Howard Thurman

And this is the strangest of all paradoxes of the human adventure; we live inside all experience, but we are permitted to bear witness only to the outside. Such is the riddle of life and the story of the passing of our days. — Howard Thurman

Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace. — Howard Thurman

At the core of life is a hard purposefulness, a determination to live. — Howard Thurman

The Christian Church has tended to overlook its Judaic origins, but the fact is that Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew of Palestine when he went about his Father's business, announcing the acceptable year of the Lord. — Howard Thurman

It's a wondrous thing, that a decision to act releases energy in the personality. For days on end a person may drift along without much energy. Having no particular sense of direction and having no will to change. Then, something happens to alter the pattern. It may be something very simple and inconsequential in itself. But it stabs awake, it alarms, it disturbs. In a flash, one gets a vivid picture of oneself, and it passes. The result is decision. Sharp, defenitive decision. In the wake of the decision, yes, even as a part of the decision itself, energy is released. The act of decision sweeps all before it, and the life of the individual maybe changed forever. — Howard Thurman

Do not be silent; there is no limit to the power that may be released through you. — Howard Thurman

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. — Howard Thurman

Twilight - a time of pause when nature changes her guard. All living things would fade and die from too much light or too much dark, if twilight were not. — Howard Thurman

Perfect love is long delayed. — Howard Thurman

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. — Howard Thurman

He recognized with authentic realism that anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny. — Howard Thurman

It has long been a matter of serious moment that for decades we have studied the various peoples of the world and those who live as our neighbors as objects of missionary endeavor and enterprise without being at all willing to treat them either as brothers or as human beings. — Howard Thurman

There is a certain grandeur and nobility in administering to another's need out of one's fullness and plenty. One — Howard Thurman

Keep fresh before me the moments of my high resolve. — Howard Thurman

Christmas is waiting to be born: in you, in me, in all mankind. — Howard Thurman

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. — Howard Thurman

Life wears down the edges of the mind. — Howard Thurman

Community cannot for long feed on itself; it can only flourish with the coming of others from beyond, their unknown and undiscovered brothers. — Howard Thurman

The basic fact is that Christianity as it was born in the mind of this Jewish thinker and teacher appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed. That it became, through the intervening years, a religion of the powerful and the dominant, used sometimes as an instrument of oppression, must not tempt us into believing that it was thus in the mind and life of Jesus. 'In him was life; and the life was the light of men.' Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them. — Howard Thurman

What I have written is but a fleeting intimation of the outside of what one man sees and may tell about the path he walks. No one shares the secret of a life; no one enters into the heart of the mystery. — Howard Thurman

Jesus rejected hatred because he saw that hatred meant death to the mind, death to the spirit, and death to communion with his Father. He affirmed life; and hatred was the great denial. — Howard Thurman

Commitment means that it is possible for a man to yield the nerve center of his consent to a purpose or cause, a movement or an ideal, which may be more important to him than whether he lives or dies. — Howard Thurman

Love has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale ... Love loves; this is its nature. — Howard Thurman

Keep alive the dream; for as long as a man has a dream in his heart, he cannot lose the significance of living. — Howard Thurman

There must be always remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful. — Howard Thurman