Harry Allen Overstreet Quotes

“A person remains immature, whatever his age, as long as he thinks of himself as an exception to the human race.”

“Arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.”

“BOOKSIf minds are truly alive they will seek out books, for books are the human race recounting its memorable experiences, confronting its problems, searching for solutions, drawing the blueprints of its futures. To read books is one way of growing along with one’s fellows-in-growth.”

“Goodness is a special kind of truth and beauty. It is truth and beauty in human behavior.”

“I may safely predict that the education of the future will be inventive-minded. It will believe so profoundly in the high value of the inventive or creative spirit that it will set itself to develop that spirit by all means within its power.”

“Newspapers have developed what might be called a vested interest in catastrophe. If they can spot a fight, they play up that fight. If they can uncover a tragedy, they will headline that tragedy.”

“One of the most important phases of maturing is that of growth from self-centering to an understanding relationship to others. A person is not mature until he has both an ability and a willingness to see himself as one among others and to do unto those others as he would have them do to him.”

“Recreation is not a secondary concern for a democracy. It is a primary concern, for the kind of recreation a people make for themselves determines the kind of people they become and the kind of society they build.”

“The average citizen expresses pride in the American Bill of Rights and then seeks to protect his real estate by restrictive covenants.”

“The happiest thing that can be said about democracy is that it is one of the few systems that has been willing to risk a long period of confusion and mixed purposes for the sake of giving man a chance to grow up in mind and responsibility.”

“The immature mind hops from one thing to another; the mature mind seeks to follow through.”

“The mature mind seeks to follow through.”

“Time, the devourer of everything.”

“To hate and to fear is to be psychologically ill. It is in fact the consuming illness of our time.”

“Sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, and love belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality.”

“Action springs out of what we fundamentally desire.”

“The secret of all true persuasion is to induce the person to persuade himself.”

“The very essence of all power to influence lies in getting the other person to participate. The mind that can do that has a powerful leverage on his human world.”

“Better a dish of illusion and a hearty appetite for life than a feast of reality and indigestion therewith.”