Organist Quotes

“Serious illness doesn't bother me for long because I am too inhospitable a host.”

“Aim for service and success will follow!”

“The elemental fact, present in our consciousness every moment of our existence, is: I am life that wills to live, in the midst of life that wills to live.... The essence of the humane spirit is: Preserve life, promote life, help life to achieve its highest destiny. The essence of Evil is: Destroy life, harm life, hamper the development of life”

“Let your life be your argument.”

“Every person I have known who has been truly happy has learned how to serve others.”

“One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.”

“I am certain and have always stressed that the destination of mankind is to become more and more humane. The ideal of humanity has to be revived.”

“When man learns to respect even the smallest being of creation...nobody has to teach him to love his fellow man. Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.”

“Does my behavior in respect of love affect nothing? That is because there is not enough love in me.”

“Once a man recognizes himself as a being surrounded by other beings in this world and begins to respect his life and take it to the highest value, he becomes a thinking being. Then he values other lives and experiences them as part of his own life. With that, his goal is to help everyone take their life to the highest value; anything which limits or destroys a life is evil. That is morality. That is how men are related to the world around them.”

“Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.”

“Our age is bent on trying to make the barren tree of skepticism fruitful by tying the fruits of truth on its branches.”

“Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.”

“Thought cannot avoid the ethical or reverence and love for all life. It will abandon the old confined systems of ethics and be forced to recognize the ethics that knows no bounds. But on the other hand, those who believe in love for all creation must realize clearly the difficulties involved in the problem of a boundless ethic and must be resolved not to veil from humankind the conflicts which this ethic will involve us, but allow us really to experience them. To think out in every implication the ethic of love for all creation this is the difficult task which confronts our age.”

“We must never allow the voice of humanity within us to be silenced. It is humanity's sympathy with all creatures that first makes us truly human.”

“Whatever you have received more than others-in health, in talents, in ability, in success, in a pleasant childhood, in harmonious conditions of home life-all this you must not take to yourself as a matter of course. In gratitude for your good fortune, you must remember in return some sacrifice of your own life for another life.”

“Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.”

“A heavy guilt rests upon us for what the whites of all nations have done to the colored peoples. When we do good to them, it is not benevolence--it is atonement.”

“...try to tell the people of America about Dr. Gerson's merits and ...results...I wish you the best in your difficult task.”

“From naive simplicity we arrive at more profound simplicity.”

“World-view is a product of life-view, not vice versa.”

“Help me to fling my life like a flaming firebrand into the gathering darkness of the world.”

“There is much coldness among men because we do not dare to be as cordial as we really are.”

“But merely accepting authoritarian truth, even if that truth has some virtue, does not bring skepticism to an end. To blindly accept a truth one has never reflected upon retards the advance of reason. Our world rots in deceit. . . . Just as a tree bears the same fruit year after year and at the same time fruit that is new each year, so must all permanently valuable ideas be continually created anew in thought. But our age pretends to make a sterile tree bear fruit by tying fruits of truth onto its branches.”

“I do not believe that we can put into anyone ideas which are not in him already. As a rule there are in everyone all sorts of good ideas, ready like tinder. But much of this tinder catches fire, or catches it successfully, only when it meets some flame or spark from outside, i.e., from some other person.”