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Felix Adler

67 quotes

“When we are about to set forth on a path hitherto untried and likely to lead our lives in a new direction, it appears eminently desirable and proper that we should, in the first place, briefly review the public and private life of the day, in order to determine whether the essential elements that make up the happiness of states and individuals are all duly provided, and if not, where the need lies and how it can best be supplied.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have already transgressed the limit of safety, and the present disorders of our time are but precursors of other and imminent dangers. The rudder of our ship has ceased to move obedient to the helm. We are drifting on the seething tide of business, each one absorbed in holding his own in the giddy race of competition, each one engrossed in immediate cares and seldom disturbed by thoughts of larger concerns and ampler interests. Even our domestic life has lost much of its former warmth and geniality.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It has been said that the modern world is divided between the hot and hasty pursuit of affairs in the hours of labor, and the no less eager chase of pleasure in the hours of leisure. But even our pleasures are calculated and business like. We measure our enjoyments by the sum expended. Our salons are often little better than bazaars of fashion.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a great and crying evil in modern society. It is want of purpose. It is that narrowness of vision which shuts out the wider vistas of the soul. It is the absence of those sublime emotions which, wherever they arise, do not fall to exalt and consecrate existence.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The very names that ought to be held up as luminaries of honor have become bywords of villainy, and the foul stench of corruption fills our public offices. See how the Nation, in this the festal epoch of her marriage to Liberty, stands blackened with the crimes of her first dignitaries, and hides her head in shame before the nations!”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Statesmen and Philanthropists are busy suggesting remedies for the cure of these great evils. But the renovation of our Civil Service, the reform of our Primaries, and whatever other measures may be devised, they all depend in the last instance upon the fidelity of those to whom their execution must be entrusted. They will all fail unless the root of the evil be attacked, unless the conscience of men be aroused, the confusion of right and wrong checked, and the loftier purposes of our being again brought powerfully home to the hearts of the people.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Already complaints are multiplying on every hand that that most gracious quality of all that adorns the age of childhood — the quality of reverence — is fast fading from our schools and households; that the oldtime respect for father and mother is diminished, and grown rarer and more uncertain.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The past speaks to us in a thousand voices, warning and comforting, animating and stirring to action. What its great thinkers have thought and written on the deepest problems of life, shall we not hear and enjoy? The future calls upon us to prepare its way. Dare we fail to answer its solemn summons?”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The exercises of our meeting are to be simple and devoid of all ceremonial and formalism. They are to consist of a lecture mainly, and, as a pleasing and grateful auxiliary, of music to elevate the heart and give rest to the feelings.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We propose to entirely exclude prayer and every form of ritual. Thus shall we avoid even the appearance of interfering with those to whom prayer and ritual, as a mode of expressing religious sentiment, are dear. And on the other hand we shall be just to those who have ceased to regard them as satisfactory and dispensed with them in their own persons.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why should there be any more the old dividing line between man and his brother-man? why should the fires of prejudice flare up anew between us? why should we not maintain this common ground which we have found at last, and hedge it round, and protect it — the stronghold of freedom and of all the humanities for the long years to come?”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Here are two kinds of light, the light on the hither side of the darkness and the light beyond the darkness. We must press on through the darkness and the terror of it if we would reach the holier light beyond. We are here — no matter who put us here, or how we came here — to fulfil a task. We cannot afford to go of our own volition until the last item of our duty is discharged.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The divine in man is our sole ground for believing that there is anything divine in the universe outside of man. Man is the revealer of the divine. At bottom, the world is to be interpreted in terms of joy, but of a joy that includes all the pain, includes it and transforms it and transcends it. The Light of the World is a light that is saturated with the darkness which it has overcome and transfigured.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Religion is a wizard, a sibyl. She faces the wreck of worlds, and prophesies restoration. She faces a sky blood-red with sunset colours that deepen into darkness, and prophesies dawn. She faces death, and prophesies life.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is the moral element contained in it that alone gives value and dignity to a religion, and only in so far as its teachings serve to stimulate and purify our moral aspirations does it deserve to retain its ascendency over mankind.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of the origin of things we know nothing, and can know nothing. Perfection does not reveal itself to us as existent in the beginning; but as something that ought to be, something new which we are to help create. Somehow the secret of the universe is hidden in our breast. Somehow the destinies of the universe depend upon our exertions.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Infinite, from which comes the impulse that lead us to activity, is not the highest Reason, but higher than reason; not the highest Goodness, but higher than goodness.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a city to be built, the plan of which we carry in our heads, in our hearts. Countless generations have already toiled at the building of it. The effort to aid in completing it, with us, takes the place of prayer. In this sense we say, "Laborare est orare.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As the light of morning strikes now one peak and then another, some being illuminated while others are in the shadow, so the light of the essential moral principle shines now upon one duty and then upon another, while others are in the shadow.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In order to join vigorously in the moral work of the world I must believe that somehow the best I can accomplish will endure, will leave its trace on things, will aid the final consummation.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The moral ideal would embrace the whole of life. In its sight nothing is petty or indifferent. It touches the veriest trifles and turns them into shining gold. We are royal by virtue of it, and like the kings in the fairy tale, we may never lay aside our crowns. The moral order never is, but is ever becoming. It grows with our growth.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We call him a hero who maintains himself, single-handed, against superior numbers. We call him a master-horseman who sits a fiery and vicious steed, guiding him at will. And in like manner, we call him a moral hero who conquers the enemies within his own breast — and we admire and revere the soul which can ride its own passions and force them into obedience to the dictates of reason.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion that each include the other, each is enriched by the other. Love is an echo in the feelings of a unity subsisting between two persons which is founded both on likeness and on complementary differences. Without the likeness there would be no attraction; without the challenge of the complementary differences there could not be the closer interweaving and the inextinguishable mutual interest which is the characteristic of all deeper relationships.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man is like a tree, with the mighty trunk of intellect, the spreading branches of imagination, and the roots of the lower instincts that bind him to the earth. The moral life, however, is the fruit he bears; in it his true nature is revealed. It is the prerogative of man that he need not blindly follow the law of his natural being, but is himself the author of a higher moral law, and creates it even in acting it out.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a difficulty in the way of teaching the higher life, due to the fact that only those who have begun to lead it can understand the meaning of it. Nevertheless, all men can be induced to begin to lead it. Though they seem blind, their eyes can be opened so as to see. Deep down in every human heart is the seed of a diviner life, which only needs the quickening influence of right conditions to germinate.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It may be impossible for a man by merely willing it to add wings to his body, but it is possible for any man, by merely willing it, to add wings to his soul. This perennial miracle of the moral nature is capable of happening at any time.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An ideal is a port toward which we resolve to steer. We may not reach it. The mere fact that our goal is definitely located does not suffice to conduct us thither. But surely we shall thus stand a better chance of making port in the end than if we drift about aimlessly, the sport of winds and tides, without having decided in our own minds in what direction we ought to bend our course. The moral law is the expression of our inmost nature, and when we live in consonance with it we feel that we are living out our true being.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By what sort of experience are we led to the conviction that spirit exists ? On the whole, by searching, painful experience. The rose Religion grows on a thorn-bush, and we must not be afraid to have our fingers lacerated by the thorns if we would pluck the rose.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is written that the last enemy to be vanquished is death. We should begin early in life to vanquish this enemy by obliterating every trace of the fear of death from our minds. Then can we turn to life and fill the whole horizon of our souls with it, turn with added zest toall the serious tasks which it imposes and to the pure delights which here and there it affords.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When the light of the sun shines through a prism it is broken into beautiful colours, and when the prism is shattered, still the light remains. So does the life of life shine resplendent in the forms of our friends, and so, when their forms are broken, still their life remains; and in that life we are united with them; for the life of their life is also our life, and we are one with them by ties indissoluble.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is the nature of the noble and the good and the wise that they impart to us of their nobility and their goodness and their wisdom while they live, making it natural for us to breathe the air they breathe and giving us confidence in our own untested powers. And the same influence in more ethereal fashion they continue to exert after they are gone.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The condition of all progress is experience. We go wrong a thousand times before we find the right path. We struggle, and grope, and hurt ourselves until we learn the use of things, and this is true of things spiritual as well as of material things. Pain is unavoidable, but it acquires a new and higher meaning when we perceive that it is the price humanity must pay for an invaluable good.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us learn from the lips of death the lessons of life. Let us live truly while we live, live for what is true and good and lasting. And let the memory of our dead help us to do this. For they are not wholly separated from us, if we remain loyal to them. In spirit they are with us. And we may think of them as silent, invisible, but real presences in our households.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The bitter, yet merciful, lesson which death teaches us is to distinguish the gold from the tinsel, the true values from the worthless chaff. The terrible events of life are great eye-openers. They force us to learn that which it is wholesome for us to know, but which habitually we try to ignore — namely, that really we have no claim on a long life ; that we are each of us liable to be called off at any moment, and that the main point is not how long we live, but with what meaning we fill the short allotted span — for short it is at best.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The right for the right's sake is the motto which everyone should take for his own life. With that as a standard of value we can descend into our hearts, appraise ourselves, and determine in how far we already are moral beings, in how far not yet.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The question what to believe is perhaps the most momentous that anyone can put to himself. Our beliefs are not to be classed among the luxuries, but among the necessaries of existence. They become particularly important in times of trouble. They are like the life-boats carried by ocean ships. As long as the sea is smooth and there is every appearance of a prosperous voyage, the passengers seldom take note of the boats or inquire into their sea-worthiness. But when the storm breaks and danger approaches, then the capacity of the boats and their soundness become matters of the first importance.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ethical religion affirms the continuity of progress toward moral perfection. It affirms that the spiritual development of the human race cannot be prematurely cut off, either gradually or suddenly; that every stone of offence against which we stumble is a stepping-stone to some greater good ; that, at the end of days, if we choose to put it so, or, rather, in some sphere beyond the world of space and time, all the rays of progress will be summed and centred in a transcendent focus.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There may be, and there ought to be, progress in the moral sphere. The moral truths which we have inherited from the past need to be expanded and restated. In times of misfortune we require for our support something of which the truth is beyond all question, in which we can put an implicit trust, " though the heavens should fall." A merely borrowed belief is, at such time, like a rotten plank across a raging torrent. The moment we step upon it, it gives way beneath our feet.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Good deeds remain good, no matter whether we know how the world was made or not. Vile deeds are vile, no matter whether we know or do not know what, after death, will be the fate of the doer. We know, at least, what his fate is now, namely, to be wedded to the vileness. The question for anyone to decide, who hesitates between good and evil, is whether he aspires to be a full-weight man, or merely the fragment, nay, the counterfeit of a man. Only he who ceaselessly aims at moral completeness is, in the true sense, a human being.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a universal element in man which he can assert by so acting as if the purpose of the Universe were also his purpose. It is the function of the supreme ordeals of life to develop in men this power, to give to their life this distinction, this height of dignity, these vast horizons.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To those who are longing for a higher life, who deeply feel the need of religious satisfactions, we suggest that there is a way in which the demands of the head and the heart may be reconciled. Religion is not necessarily allied with dogma, a new kind of faith is possible, based not upon legend and tradition, not upon the authority of any book, but upon the moral nature of man.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We should teach our children nothing which they shall ever need to unlearn; we should strive to transmit to them the best possessions, the truest thought, the noblest sentiments of the age in which we live.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The frontier of the higher life is everywhere contiguous to the common life, and we can cross the border at any moment. The higher life is as real as the grosser things in which we put our trust. But our eyes must be anointed so that we may see it. The office of the religious teacher is to be a seer, and to make others see, and thus to win them into the upward way.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We should seek to free the moral life from the embarrassments and entanglements in which it has been involved by the quibbles of the schools and the mutual antagonisms of the sects; to introduce into it an element of downrightness and practical earnestness; above all, to secure to the modern world, in its struggle with manifold evil, the boon of moral unity, despite intellectual diversity.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe in the supreme excellence of righteousness; I believe that the law of righteousness will triumph in the universe over all evil; I believe that in the attempt to fulfil the law of righteousness, however imperfect it must remain, are to be found the inspiration, the consolation, and the sanctification of human existence. We live in order to finish an, as yet, unfinished universe, unfinished so far as the human, that is, the highest part of it, is concerned. We live in order to develop the superior qualities of man which are, as yet, for the most part latent.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What I state as certain is certain for me. It has approved itself as such in my experience. Let others consult their experience, and see how far it tallies with that which is here set forth.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Supreme Ethical Rule: Act So As To Elicit the Best In Others and Thereby In Thy Self.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The radiant future stretches forth its arms toward us, and binds us to be willing servants to its work, willingly to accept those limitations of the individual will which are indispensable in the service of a far-off cause, a service which at the same time disciplines and ennobles the individual himself.”
Felix Adler (1851–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source