Theodore Parker Quotes

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 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.

Outward judgment often fails, inward judgment never.

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.

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

[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.

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

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.

Magnificent promises are always to be suspected.

A happy wedlock is a long falling in love.

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.

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.

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.

There is no college for the conscience.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Disappointment is often the salt of life.

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.

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

The miser, poor fool, not only starves his body, but also his own soul.

Politics is the science of urgencies.

Humanity is the sin of God

The use of great men is to serve the little men, to take care of the human race, and act as practical interpreters of justice and truth.

It is vain to trust in wrong; as much of evil, so much of loss, is the formula of human history.

Pride is both a virtue and a vice.

You may not, cannot, appropriate beauty. It is the wealth of the eye, and a cat may gaze upon a king.

Temperance is corporeal piety; it is the preservation of divine order in the body.

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.

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.

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.

Wealth and want equally harden the human heart...

Yet, if he would, man cannot live all to this world. If not religious, he will be superstitious. IF he worship not the true God, he will have his idols.

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

It is not from the tall crowded workhouse of prosperity that men first or clearest see the eternal stars of heaven.

Who escapes a duty, avoids a gain.

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.

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

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.

Humanity is the Son of God.

In all the world there is nothing so remarkable as a great man, nothing so rare, nothing which so well repays study.

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

The most useful is the greatest.

Remorse is the pain of sin.

No virtue fades out of mankind. Not over-hopeful by inborn temperament, cautious by long experience, I yet never despair of human virtue.

There never was a great truth but it was reverenced; never a great institution, nor a great man, that did not, sooner or later, receive the reverence of mankind.