“We did live in dire poverty. And one of the things that I hated was poverty. Some people hate spiders. Some people hate snakes. I hated poverty. I couldn't stand it. My mother couldn't stand the fact that we were doing poorly in school, and she prayed and she asked God to give her wisdom. What could she do to get her young sons to understand the importance of developing their minds so that they control their own lives? God gave her the wisdom. At least in her opinion. My brother and I didn't think it was that wise. Turn off the TV, let us watch only two or three TV programs during the week. And with all that spare time read two books a piece from the Detroit Public Libraries and submit to her written book reports, which she couldn't read but we didn't know that. I just hated this. My friends were out having a good time. Her friends would criticize her. My mother didn't care. But after a while I actually began to enjoy reading those books. Because we were very poor, but between the covers of those books I could go anywhere. I could be anybody. I could do anything. I began to read about people of great accomplishment. And as I read those stories, I began to see a connecting thread. I began to see that the person who has the most to do with you, and what happens to you in life, is you. You make decisions. You decide how much energy you want to put behind that decision. And I came to understand that I had control of my own destiny. And at that point I didn't hate poverty anymore, because I knew it was only temporary. I knew I could change that. It was incredibly liberating for me. Made all the difference.” 

“Governmental programs are often faceless and unsustainable. Handouts create more dependency in the populace, decreasing overall societal productivity and depleting the resources of the agencies providing the handouts. The taxpayer base decreases, the dependent population increases, and taxpayer money runs out.”

“Compassion, however, should mean providing a mechanism to escape poverty rather than simply maintaining people in an impoverished state by supplying handouts. By doing this we give them an opportunity to elevate their personal situations, which eventually decreases our need to take care of them and empowers them to be able to exercise compassion toward others.”

“Rather than trying to control or confiscate guns, it might be smarter to offer free, public gun-safety courses. In countries like Switzerland, every man within a certain age range is required to possess a gun and to know how to use it, and Switzerland has one of the lowest gun homicide rates in the world. It is clear that guns do not kill people by themselves. Rather, people who are determined to kill will find whatever means are available to accomplish their mission.”

“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?”

“It does not matter where we come from or what we look like. If we recognize our abilities, are willing to learn and to use what we know in helping others, we will always have a place in the world.”

“Wealthy people in the United States have created more charitable organizations and been more philanthropic than any other group in the world. We should celebrate their achievements rather than envy them.”

“The bottom line was that we have only ourselves to blame. We create our own destiny by the way we do things. We have to take advantage of opportunities”

“If we recognize our talents and use them appropriately, and choose a field that uses those talents, we will rise to the top of our field.”

“The founders also knew that every government system risks corruption, and they wanted to make sure Americans would be able to defend themselves should the nation’s leaders become tyrannical. To that end, they ratified the Second Amendment, guaranteeing the right of Americans to bear arms. An armed populace is a powerful deterrent to tyrants both domestically and internationally, and we must defend this liberty as part of our common defense.”

“There is no freedom without bravery.”

“People are simply not willing to look at their problems honestly and admit that they have problems.”

“I can tolerate amazing amounts of stress and ridicule. By God’s grace, it still doesn’t require any effort to shake off unpleasant, irritating things. God has helped me to conquer my terrible temper, once and forever. During those hours in the bathroom I also came to realize that if people could make me angry they could control me. Why should I give someone else such power over my life? Over the years I’ve chuckled at people who deliberately did things they thought would make me angry. I’m no better than anyone else, but I laugh inside at how foolish people can be, trying to make me angry.”

“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.”

“An important verity about knowledge is that the brain works most effectively with consciously retained information. We more easily remember what we want to recall later. When we feed our fourteen billion brain cells with information that will enrich us and help others, we are really learning to Think Big.”