“Great things were going to happen in my life, and I had to do my part by preparing myself and being ready.”

“Ben learned an important lesson: sometimes to survive you need to face your fear and overcome it.”

“When I entered Yale, I had to face two important facts about myself. First, though I could consider myself a smart enough person — I was not quite as smart as I thought I was. Second, I did not know how to do in-depth studying.”

“if you can read, honey, you can learn just about anything you want to know. The doors of the world are open to people who can read.

“Successful people don’t have fewer problems. They have determined that nothing will stop them from going forward.”

“creativity is just learning to do something with a different perspective.”

“I am convinced that knowledge is power - to overcome the past, to change our own situations, to fight new obstacles, to make better decisions.”

“facts about myself. First, though I could consider myself a smart enough person — I was not quite as smart as I thought I was. Second, I did not know how to do in-depth studying.”

“Saul Alinsky advised his followers to level sharp attacks against their opponents with the goal of goading them into rash counterattacks that would then discredit them. To avoid falling into this trap, those of us who are interested in civil discussion should prepare ourselves to refrain from reacting in fear or anger to those who disagree with us or even attack us.”

“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.”

“The human brain has billions of neurons and hundreds of billions of interconnections. It can process more than two million bits of information per second and can remember everything you have ever seen or heard.”

“They forbid the use of the word slavery by conservatives, the mention of Nazism by conservatives, or the mention of homosexuality in anything other than a positive context, to name a few of their rules.”

“There is no such thing as an average human being. If you have a normal brain, you are superior.”

“We can help our nation quite a bit if we refrain from getting into our respective corners and throwing hand grenades at each other, and instead try to understand the other’s viewpoint, reject the stifling of political correctness, and engage in intelligent civil discussion.”

“They decreed that the American government always be controlled by the will of the people, not the people by the will of the government.”