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
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.
When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flock, The work of Christmas begins: ...To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among brothers, To make music in the heart.
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.
During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.
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?'
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
Community cannot for long feed on itself; it can only flourish with the coming of others from beyond, their unknown and undiscovered brothers.
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.
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.
A bigot is a person who makes an idol of his commitments.
He who fears is literally delivered to destruction.
Christmas is a mood, a quality, a symbol. It is never merely a fact.