Source: The Meaning of God in Human Experience (1912), Ch. IX : The Retreat into Subjectivity, p. 105.
Context: Nothing can stir the "depths" of mind, but total out-of-doors. We call "depth," last dregs, etc., that in man which only ultimate facts and happenings can interest; that which the near and usual can neither rouse nor ruffle. Somewhere in each man, we imagine, there lies an ultimatum, to be backed by all his energies from all reservoirs, ordinary and extraordinary,--what can elicit from any man such ultimatum and ultimatum-backing?--nothing that has not somewhere in it the word All! There are such things, we think, as ruling passions, "deepest desires," in any man some nameable or unnameable last ambition--what can set such a depth on fire?--nothing but some total opportunity (real or believed real), discovered in the wide world beyond the self.
William Ernest Hocking: Man
William Ernest Hocking was American philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on man.
Source: The Meaning of God in Human Experience (1912), Ch. XII : The Will as a Maker of Truth, p. 140.
Context: For maturity is marked by the preference to be defeated rather than have a subjective success. We as mature persons can worship only that which we are compelled to worship. If we are offered a man-made God and a self-answering prayer, we will rather have no God and no prayer. There can be no valid worship except that in which man is involuntarily bent by the presence of the Most Real, beyond his will.
The Meaning of Immortality in Human Experience (1957), p. 5.
Context: Man is the only animal that contemplates death, and also the only animal that shows any sign of doubt of its finality. This does not mean that he doubts it as a future fact. He accepts his own death, with that of others, as inevitable; plans for it; provides for the time when he shall be out of the picture. Yet, not less today than formerly, he confronts this fact with a certain incredulity regarding the scope of its destruction.
Source: Present Status of the Philosophy of Law and of Rights (1926), Ch. I : What is Behind Us?, p. 1.
Context: When law was held to come direct from the gods, it required a bold man and a prophet to propose a change in it. Perhaps it is still true that a law-maker ought to be something of a prophet. But if so, we are committed in western lands to the belief that prophetic capacity is widespread: the making of law goes on everywhere merrily and apace.
In the midst of this vast labor it becomes clear to us that the more we relieve the gods of their burdens, the more we need to know what the gods know, the general principles on which law should be made. And if this knowledge were universal, and were applied in good faith, the law-makers themselves would in turn be relieved! In either case, then, we are bound to keep trying for a systematic grasp of those principles of law which we now possess in vague and fragmentary fashion.
As quoted in The Little Giant Encyclopedia of Inspirational Quotes (2005) by Wendy Toliver, p. 18.
Source: The Meaning of God in Human Experience (1912), Ch. XVI : The Original Sources of the Knowledge of God, p. 237.
Source: Present Status of the Philosophy of Law and of Rights (1926), Ch. VII, Natural Right, § 32, p. 73.
The Coming World Civilization (1956), p. 7.
Source: Present Status of the Philosophy of Law and of Rights (1926), Ch. VII, Natural Right, § 33, p. 75.