Quotes from Felix Adler

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

The freedom of thought is a sacred right of every individual man, and diversity will continue to increase with the progress, refinement, and differentiation of the human intellect.

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.

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.

Perhaps a hundred people assembled one evening, May 15 1876, at the time when the country was celebrating the hundredth anniversary of its political independence.

The hero is the 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.

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.

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.

The exercises of our meeting are to be simple and devoid of all ceremonial and formalism.

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.

Act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in thyself.

The ethical manifold, conceived of as unified, furnishes, or rather is, the ideal of the whole.

No one can fail to see that the power of the Church among large numbers in many communities is today diminishing, or has already ceased.

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.

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.

No religion can long continue to maintain its purity when the church becomes the subservient vassal of the state.

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

The family is the school of duties - founded on love

Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion that each include the other, each is enriched by the other.

Love of country is like love of woman - he loves her best who seeks to bestow on her the highest good