Felix Adler Quotes

• Simplicity should not be identified with bareness.

  Felix Adler

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Simplicity
• 

  The past speaks to us in a thousand voices, warning and comforting, animating and stirring to action.

  Felix Adler

  Topics in Past

  Tags in Animating, Action

• The unique personality which is the real life in me, I can not gain unless I search for the real life, the spiritual quality, in others. I am myself spiritually dead unless I reach out to the fine quality dormant in others. For it is only with the god enthroned in the innermost shrine of the other, that the god hidden in me, will consent to appear.

  Felix Adler

  Topics in God, Religion, Spirituality

  Tags in Connections, Worth

• The platform of an Ethical Society is itself the altar; the address must be the fire that burns thereon.

  Felix Adler

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Altar, Thereon, Fire, Burn

• Few are there that will leave the secure seclusion of the scholar’s life, the peaceful walks of literature and learning, to stand out a target for the criticism of unkind and hostile minds.

  Felix Adler

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Scholar, Walk, Learning, Literature, Criticism

• There is as yet no civilized society, but only a society in the process of becoming civilized. There is as yet no civilized nation, but only nations in the process of becoming civilized. From this standpoint, we can now speak of a collective task of humankind. The task of humanity is to build a genuine civilization.

  Felix Adler

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Civilization

• In a country of such recent civilization as ours, whose almost limitless treasures of material wealth invite the risks of capital and the industry of labor, it is but natural that material interests should absorb the attention of the people to a degree elsewhere unknown.

  Felix Adler

  Topics in Risk

  Tags in Absorb, Treasures, Labor, Civilization

• Admitting the force of these contentions, nevertheless, the custom of meeting together in public assembly for the consideration of the most serious, the most exalted topics of human interest is too vitally precious to be lost.

  Felix Adler

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Precious, Consideration, Serious, Interest

• You do not build your own houses, nor make your own garments, nor bake your own bread, simply because you know that if you were to attempt all these things they would all be more or less ill done.

  Felix Adler

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Bread

• The human race may be compared to a writer. At the outset a writer has often only a vague general notion of the plan of his work, and of the thought he intends to elaborate. As he proceeds, penetrating his material, laboring to express himself fitly, he lays a firmer grasp on his thought; he finds himself. So the human race is writing its story, finding itself, discovering its own underlying purpose, revising, recasting a tale pathetic often, yet none the less sublime.

  Felix Adler

  Topics in Humanity

  Tags in Humanism, Purpose

• The office of the public teacher is an unenviable and thankless one.

  Felix Adler

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Teacher, Public

• Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt.

  Felix Adler

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Corrupt, Roots, Probity, Private

• The hero is one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by. The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light.

  Felix Adler

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Integrity/Individuality, Hero, Example

• The family is the school of duties – founded on love.

  Felix Adler

  Topics in Family, Love

  Tags in School

• An anxious unrest, a fierce craving desire for gain has taken possession of the commercial world, and in instances no longer rare the most precious and permanent goods of human life have been madly sacrificed in the interests of momentary enrichment.

  Felix Adler

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Rare, Possession, Anxious, Momentary, Unrest, Gain

• The conception of worth, that each person is an end per se, is not a mere abstraction. Our interest in it is not merely academic. Every outcry against the oppression of some people by other people, or against what is morally hideous is the affirmation of the principle that a human being as such is not to be violated. A human being is not to be handled as a tool but is to be respected and revered.

  Felix Adler

  Topics in Respect

  Tags in Integrity/Individuality, Ethics, Reverence, Worth

• We measure our enjoyments by the sum expended.

  Felix Adler

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Measure, Enjoyment

• If you desire information on some point of law, you are not likely to ponder over the ponderous tomes of legal writers in order to obtain the knowledge you seek, by your own unaided efforts.

  Felix Adler

  Topics in Effort, Knowledge

  Tags in Likely, Obtain, Ponder

• FOR a long time the conviction has been dimly felt in the community that, without prejudice to existing institutions, the legal day of weekly rest might be employed to advantage for purposes affecting the general good.

  Felix Adler

  Tags in Prejudice, Affecting, Employed

• For more than three thousand years men have quarreled concerning the formulas of their faith.

  Felix Adler

  Tags in Formulas, Quarreled, concerning

Felix Adler (34)

Birth:	13th August, 1851
Death:	24th April, 1933
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Professor, Social Reformer

About

Felix Adler was born in Alzey, Grand Duchy of Hesse, Germany. He was a German-born American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, influential lecturer on euthanasia, religious leader and social reformer who founded the Ethical Culture movement. He graduated from Columbia University in 1870 with honors. He received a PhD from Heidelberg University in 1873. In 1902 he was given the chair of political and social ethics at Columbia University, where he taught until his death in 1933. He wrote several books include: Creed and Deed, The Moral Instruction of Children, Life and Destiny, The Religion of Duty, Marriage and Divorce, An Ethical Philosophy of Life, and The Essentials of Spirituality.

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