“We are called to obey Christ. He is the Master of our lives and has washed us in His blood, which cleanses our souls, our minds, and our mouths. The world is watching. What do they see and hear?”

“The bottom line in leadership isn’t how far we advance ourselves but how far we advance others.”

“Before you change your thinking, you have to change what goes into your mind

“Grief comes with many losses. Whatever its cause, grief will come to all of us.”

“If you’re going to do this work, Barack, you’ve got to stop worrying about whether people like you. They won’t.” Patronage,”

“The question is not, “Will my calendar be full?” but “Who will fill my calendar?” If we are leaders of others, the question is not, “Will I see people?” but “Who will I see?

“Goethe recommended, “Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them become what they are capable of becoming.”

“Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.”

“Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of--something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possesed your soul have been but hints of it--tantalizing glimspes, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest--if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself--you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say 'Here at last is the thing I was made for.' We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the things we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.”

“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.” 

“You are your own cannoe and you are your own paddle, so paddle your own cannoe. Society had taught us to give away our power and abilities by making us to believe that other people are responsible for our success and failure. That is not fair!”

“Our contribution to the progress of the world must, therefore, consist in setting our own house in order.”

“I have consistently preached that nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek. I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.”

“Learn to keep close to [Jesus], to listen to His voice, and follow Him.”

“When politicians prioritize local rule instead of trying to force the whole country to agree with them, I think the pursuit of happiness will be within the reach of a far greater portion of our populace.”