Wednesday 9 December 2009

Harold Whitman


"Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

~ Harold Whitman (Is a fictional name....no one know's who really said this)



This quote sometimes is confused with Howard Thurman Whitman (1899 - April 10, 1981) was an influential American author, philosopher, theologian, educator and civil rights leader. He was Dean of Theology and the chapels at Howard University and Boston University for more than two decades, wrote 20 books, and in 1944 helped found the first racially integrated, multicultural church in the United States.


However...Howard Thurman Whitman did say this,"In the conflicts between man and man, between group and group, between nation and nation, the loneliness of the seeker for community is sometimes unendurable. The radical tension between good and evil, as man sees it and feels it, does not have the last word about the meaning of life and the nature of existence. There is a spirit in man and in the world working always against the thing that destroys and lays waste. Always he must know that the contradictions of life are not final or ultimate; he must distinguish between failure and a many-sided awareness so that he will not mistake conformity for harmony, uniformity for synthesis. He will know that for all men to be alike is the death of life in man, and yet perceive harmony that transcends all diversities and in which diversity finds its richness and significance." From The Search For Common Ground; An Inquiry Into The Basis Of Man's Experience Of Community.

Book: Feeding the Animals: Originally published in 1901.
Book:  Community:  The structure of belonging
Book: The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature by Jung
Book:  Creating Harmony: Conflict Resolution in Community