“I had a mother who would never allow herself to be a victim no matter what happened… Never made excuses, and she never accepted an excuse from us. And if we ever came up with an excuse, she always said, "Do you have a brain?" And if the answer was yes, then she said, "Then you could have thought your way out of it.”

“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?”

“If you hear how wonderful you are often enough, you begin to believe it, no matter how you try to resist it.”

“When we have done our best, we also have to learn that we still need to rely on God. Our best — no matter how good — is incomplete if we leave God out of the picture.”

“We were very poor. But between the covers of books I could go anywhere, I could be anybody, I could do anything. I began to read about people of great accomplishment. As I read those stories, I began to see a connecting thread. I began to see that the person who had the most to do with you and what happened to you in life, is you. You make decisions. You decide how much energy you want to put behind that decision.”

“Finally, we the people exercise power by speaking our minds. Many of the early patriots in our nation had experienced tyranny that prevented them from expressing their opinions. They could not speak against the king or against the established church. They knew that America’s citizens would need to be free to express themselves if they were to rule. Thus they set in place the Constitution’s First Amendment, guaranteeing the freedom of speech and expression. We’ve preserved this freedom so that our government doesn’t usually try to prevent the people from speaking. Recognizing this achievement, many assert that there is no restriction of speech in the United States and that everyone is completely free to express themselves. Unfortunately, this is a naive claim. Today the political correctness (PC) police are the biggest threat to America’s freedom of speech, and they are doing their best to squelch the opinions of “we the People.” There is not an officially established PC police force, but its members exist in government, throughout the media, in educational institutions, etc. Members of the PC police are those who carefully monitor the speech and behavior of anyone they consider to be a threat to their leftist ideological domination. The PC police do not care that people disagree with them, as long as those people remain silent. But if someone openly disagrees with them, they demonize that person with ridicule and infantile name-calling. This kind of speech policing has created fear in a large portion of our populace, causing them to remain silent rather than face the repercussions of expressing themselves honestly.”

“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.”

“The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man; nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall; nations perish; civilizations grow old and die out. After an era of darkness, new races build others; but in the world of books are volumes that live on still as young and fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead. — Clarence Day”

“We want to make decisions based on facts. Many people do not. They make their decisions based on what their momma says or what their daddy says or what their political party says — without engaging their brains.”

“Because if you don’t accept excuses, pretty soon people stop giving them, and they start looking for solutions. And that is a critical issue when it comes to success.”

“Then, as they began to decline, they all experienced some peculiar similarities: an inordinate emphasis on sports and entertainment, a fixation with lifestyles of the rich and famous, political corruption, and the loss of a moral compass.”

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

“Through education, I was completely changed to become a productive citizen of the world. And what is true in the life of one is true in the life of whole communities and entire nations: education has the power to transform.”

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

“When a government turns from following the will of its people to willing its people to follow — acting according to its own prerogatives — it ceases to be a representative government and instead has transformed into something else. One”