“Everyone in the world worth being nice to. Because God never creates inferior human beings, each person deserves respect and dignity.”

“When I treat other people with kindness and love, it is part of my way of paying my debt to God and the world for the privilege of living on this planet.”

“Worst of all, we seem to have lost our ability to discuss important issues respectfully and courteously and cannot come together enough to begin to solve our problems.”

“GROWING UP changes one’s definition of what is fun — maturation does that, thankfully — so I hate to admit now that as a boy I thoroughly enjoyed throwing rocks at cars. It was a thrill to wait in hiding, ambush the car driving by, and then make our escape. Occasionally, a driver would stop their vehicle and get out to yell at us. But if we were really fortunate, they would chase us. We would run just far enough ahead to encourage them, but when they got close, we would turn on the afterburners of youth, leaving them far behind while we laughed hysterically. Once in a while, the police would come by — usually in unmarked cars — and the chase would be much more dramatic until we reached the ten-foot-tall fences at the end of the neighborhood field. To the police, it must have appeared as if they had us trapped. They had no idea, however, how practiced we were at vaulting those fences. We treated it like an Olympic event, running at full speed toward the fence and then leaping high into the air, grabbing the chain links, and allowing the momentum of our feet to swing us over the top and down on the other side. We would laugh at the police as we ran off, knowing there was no way they would follow us. Today I have great admiration for the police, who risk their lives on a daily basis to protect our lives, freedom, and property.”

“Tell the truth. If you tell the truth all the time you don't have to worry three months down the line about what you said three months earlier. Truth is always the truth. You won't have to complicate your life by trying to cover up.”

“When someone is being particularly mean and nasty, I simply think to myself, he or she used to be a cute little baby, I wonder what happened?”

“close the wounds, and the 22-hour surgical ordeal was over. The Siamese”

“He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city” (RSV).”

“If you want to be relevant only in your household, then you only need to know the things that are important in your house, and if you want to be relevant in your neighborhood, you need to know what's important in your neighborhood. The same thing applies to your city, state, and country. And if you want to be relevant to the entire world, program that computer known as your brain with all kinds of information from everywhere in order to prepare yourself.”

“We need to start evaluating people based on their abilities and not on their sex or other congenital characteristics.” 

“To do his best, one needs a confidence that says, "I can do anything, and if I can't do it, I know how to get help.”

“I came to realize that if people could make me angry they could could control me. Why should I give someone else such power over my life?”

“unity is possible among the people of our nation with the right kind of leadership. But we the people must for ourselves determine that we will be indivisible regardless of the leadership, and we must exercise our ability to identify the divisive forces and vote them out of office.”

“If we acknowledge our need for God, he will help us.”