Top 107 Quotes & Sayings by Theodore Parker

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Humanity is the sin of God.

Wealth and want equally harden the human heart.

It is very sad for a man to make himself servant to a single thing; his manhood all taken out of him by the hydraulic pressure of excessive business.

Outward judgment often fails, inward judgment never.

The miser, starving his brother's body, starves also his own soul, and at death shall creep out of his great estate of injustice, poor and naked and miserable.

Truth never yet fell dead in the streets; it has such affinity with the soul of man, the seed however broadcast will catch somewhere and produce its hundredfold.

No man is so great as mankind.

Cities have always been the fireplaces of civilization, whence light and heat radiated out into the dark.

Never violate the sacredness of your individual self-respect.

The books that help you the most are those which make you think the most.

Self-denial is indispensable to a strong character, and the highest kind comes from a religious stock.

Remorse is the pain of sin.

As society advances the standard of poverty rises.

Let others laugh when you sacrifice desire to duty, if they will. You have time and eternity to rejoice in.

The diamond which shines in the Saviour's crown shall burn in unquenched beauty at last on the forehead of every human soul.

That which is called liberality is frequently nothing more than the vanity of giving.

Every man has at times in his mind the Ideal of what he should be, but is not. This ideal may be high and complete, or it may be quite low and insufficient; yet in all men, that really seek to improve, it is better than the actual character... Man never falls so low, that he can see nothing higher than himself.

Intellect is stronger than cannon.

Did the mass of men know the actual selfishness and injustice of their rulers, not a government would stand a year. - The world would foment with revolution.

Never violate the sacredness of your individual self-respect. Be true to your own mind and conscience, your heart and your soul. So only can you be true to God.

The Roman Christian mythology (and theology) discourages the vice of licentiousness, and so this is better than the heathen, but it encourages bigotry, hypocrisy, cant, and many another vice which the older Mother of Abominations kept clear from.

Magnificent promises are always to be suspected.

There is no intercessor, angel, mediator, between man and God; for man can speak and God hear, each for himself. He requires no advocates to plead for men.

The Bible goes equally to the cottage of the peasant, and the palace of the king. - It is woven into literature, and colors the talk of the street. The bark of the merchant cannot sail without it; and no ship of war goes to the conflict but it is there. It enters men's closets; directs their conduct, and mingles in all the grief and cheerfulness of life.

It seems strange that a butterfly's wing should be woven up so thin and gauzy in the monstrous loom of nature, and be so delicately tipped with fire from such a gross hand, and rainbowed all over in such a storm of thunderous elements. The marvel is that such great forces do such nice work.

A democracy,- that is a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness' sake I will call it the idea of Freedom.

Man is the jewel of God, who has created this material world to keep his treasure in.

There is no college for the conscience.

What sad faces one always sees in the asylums for orphans! It is more fatal to neglect the heart than the head.

Love is the piety of the affections.

The great man is to be the servant of mankind, not they of him.

The joy of heaven will begin as soon as we attain the character of heaven, and do its duties.

I believe in the admission of women to the full rights of citizenship and share in government, on the express grounds that few women keep house so badly or with such wastefulness as chancellors of the exchequer keep the state.

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one. . . . But from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.

The books which help you most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is by easy reading; every man that tries it finds it so. But a great book that comes from a great thinker, — it is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth, with beauty too.

Democracy means not "I am as good as you are" but "You are as good as I am.".

He prays best who, not asking God to do man's work, prays penitence, prays resolutions, and then prays deeds--thus supplicating with heart and head and hands.

All men need something to poetize and idealize their life a little-something which they value for more than its use, and which is a symbol of their emancipation from the mere materialism and drudgery of daily life.

Gratitude is a nice touch of beauty added last of all to the countenance. Giving a classic beauty, an angelic loveliness, to the character.

Religion without joy-it is no religion.

It takes a Newton to forge a Newton. What man could have fabricated a Jesus? None but a Jesus.

Greatness is its own torment.

Humanity is the sin of God

The earnestness of life is the only passport to satisfaction of life.

Want and wealth equally harden the human heart, as frost and fire are both alien to the human flesh. Famine and gluttony alike drive away nature from the heart of man.

Every rose is an autograph from the hand of the Almighty God on this world about us. He has inscribed His thoughts in these marvelous hieroglyphics which sense and science have been these many thousand years seeking to understand.

Applying good sense to religion and religion to life. This is the field in which I design to labor

Nature is man's religious book, with lessons for every day.

Let us do our duty in our shop or our kitchen, in the market, the street, the office, the school, the home, just as faithfully as if we stood in the front rank of some great battle, and knew that victory for mankind depended on our bravery, strength, and skill. When we do that, the humblest of us will be serving in that great army which achieves the welfare of the world.

First there is the democratic idea: that all men are endowed by their creator with certain natural rights; that these rights are alienable only by the possessor thereof; that they are equal in men; that government is to organize these natural, unalienable and equal rights into institutions designed for the good of the governed, and therefore government is to be of all the people, by all the people, and for all the people. Here government is development, not exploitation.

Great success is a great temptation.

Silence is a figure of speech, unanswerable, short, cold, but terribly severe.

A happy wedlock is a long falling in love.

[America is] a rebellious nation. Our whole history is treason; our blood was attained before we were born; our creeds were infidelity to the mother church; our constitution treason to our fatherland.

Who escapes a duty, avoids a gain.

Manly natural religion - it is not joining the Church; it is not to believe in a creed, Hebrew, Protestant, Catholic, Trinitarian, Unitarian, Nothingarian. It is not to keep Sunday idle; to attend meetings; to be wet with water; to read the Bible; to offer prayers in words; to take bread and wine in the meeting house; love a scape-goat Jesus, or any other theological clap-trap.

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight, I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

Disappointment is often the salt of life.

To obtain a knowledge of duty, a man is not sent away, outside of himself, to ancient documents; for the only rule of faith a practice, the Word, is very nigh him, even in his heart, and by this word he is to try all documents.