Georgia Elma Harkness (April 21, 1891 – August 21, 1974) was a Christian theologian in the Methodist tradition.
To keep God at the center of one's life requires frequent renewal of power through prayer.
The tendency to turn human judgments into divine commands makes religion one of the most dangerous forces in the world.
To pray well one must pray much.
the most common type of pessimism is neither philosophical nor religious: it is the pessimism of thwarted desire. . . . It is the cynical sneer of the man who, seeking roses, finds only ashes.
Life is a continual alternation of rest and action, of the need of comfort and the need of power.
Everybody, whether or not he puts the question vocally, wants to know whether life has any meaning, what his relation is to 'whatever gods there be,' why he is here, what his destiny is, how sin and pain may be overcome, whether prayer matters, what lies beyond death for himself and his loved ones.
Persons who would never think of announcing boldly to the world, 'I am a scholar,' 'I am a great artist,' 'I am a beautiful woman,' nevertheless seem to think it wholly within the bounds of good taste to announce that they are Christians!
To discover, or recover, the sense of religious certainty one must worship.
The primary battle which religion must fight today is the battle to justify its own existence.
the truth is seldom found in extremes. Central truths can be revolutionary if put to work.
love is always in danger of being sentimentalized.
The perpetual danger which besets religion is that it may substitute gentility and aestheticism for prophetic insight and power.
while religion is ethical, it by no means follows that ethics is religion.
Many now veer away from the time-honored use of the term Father as applied to the Christian God. . . This difficulty rests mainly, I believe, on failure to distinguish between a symbol and a definition.
One can be coerced to church, but not to worship.
churches, like all the rest of our major institutions, are rooted in capitalism. For a church to attack capitalism is to 'bite the hand that feeds it.
a sick society, unlike a sick individual, fares best under the ministration of many doctors.
Prayer is the opening of the soul to God so that he can speak to us.
the principal sources of human misery may fairly be said to lie in the over-possession, under-possession, and the unwise use of economic goods.