Howard Thurman
African-American author, philosopher, theologian, and civil rights leader, one of the most influential Black contemplatives of the twentieth century and a foundational figure in the spiritual lineage of the American civil rights movement. Born in 1899 in Daytona, Florida, the grandson of an enslaved woman, he became the first Black dean of chapel at a major American university (Boston University) and in 1944 co-founded the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco — one of the first intentionally interracial, intentionally interfaith congregations in the United States. His 1949 book Jesus and the Disinherited articulated a contemplative Christianity from the perspective of the oppressed; Martin Luther King Jr. is said to have carried it with him on the bus boycotts. He died in 1981 in San Francisco, leaving a body of work — Meditations of the Heart, The Inward Journey, With Head and Heart — that remains a touchstone for contemplative Black liberation theology and ecumenical mysticism.
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Quotes by Howard Thurman
104 quotes“There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself.”
“It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls.”
“Hatred destroys finally the core of the life of the hater.”
“It is to the heart that we must finally come to find the deepest impulses of life.”
“There is in every person, an inward sea, and in that sea there is an island and on that island there is an altar.”
“To see what is real and to live it, that is the inward journey.”
“The contradictions of life are not in themselves either good or bad — they are merely contradictions.”
“Love is the only path that has any meaning in the long sweep of human history.”
“To do for others what we cannot do for ourselves is the highest expression of love.”
“Whenever we look into the face of an enemy, we see ourselves.”
“Love is the deliberate releasing of self into the cause of another person.”
“In the silence of stillness, the spirit speaks.”
“All life is a search for meaning.”
“To put on Christ is to put off fear.”
“The forces of fear, deception, and hatred are arrayed against the disinherited.”
“In the face of these forces, only the deep technique of the spirit can withstand.”
“The freedom of the inner man is the only freedom worth having.”
“Hope is the spring out of which all genuine action flows.”
“Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
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