Howard Thurman
Howard Thurman
Howard Washington Thurmanwas an influential African American author, philosopher, theologian, educator, and civil rights leader. He played a leading role in many social justice movements and organizations of the twentieth century and was one of the leading religious figures of twentieth-century America. Thurman's theology of radical nonviolence influenced and shaped a generation of civil rights activists and he was a key mentor to leaders within the movement such as Martin Luther King, Jr...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
Date of Birth18 November 1900
CountryUnited States of America
Howard Thurman quotes about
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.
The hard thing when you get old is to keep your horizons open. The first part of your life everything is in front of you, all your potential and promise. But over the years, you make decisions; you carve yourself into a given shape. Then the challenge is to keep discovering the green growing edge.
A dream is the bearer of a new possibility, the enlarged horizon, the great hope.
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.
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.
A bigot is a person who makes an idol of his commitments.
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.
Fate is the raw materials of experience. They come uninvited and often unanticipated. Destiny is what a man does with these raw materials.
He who fears is literally delivered to destruction.
Life wears down the edges of the mind.
Ask yourself what makes you come alive.
Christmas is a mood, a quality, a symbol. It is never merely a fact.
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.
Where refugees seek deliverance that never comesAnd the heart consumes itself as if it would live,Where children age before their timeAnd life wears down the edges of the mind,Where the old man sits with mind grown cold,While bones and sinew, blood and cell, go slowly down to death,Where fear companions each day's life,And Perfect Love seems long delayed.CHRISTMAS IS WAITING TO BE BORN:In you, in me, in all mankind.