“While wisdom dictates the need for education, education does not necessarily make one wise.”

“Knowledge is the key that unlocks all the doors. You can be green-skinned with yellow polka dots and come from Mars, but if you have knowledge that people need instead of beating you, they'll beat a path to your door.”

“Class warfare is an artificial division created for political advantage, and it should be rejected outright”

“when the Vietnamese came to the United States they often faced prejudice from everyone—White, Black, and Hispanics. But they didn’t beg for handouts and often took the lowest jobs offered. Even well-educated individuals didn’t mind sweeping floors if it was a paying job. Today many of these same Vietnamese are property owners and entrepreneurs. That’s the message I try to get across to the young people. The same opportunities are there, but we can’t start out as vice president of the company. Even if we landed such a position, it wouldn’t do us any good anyway because we wouldn’t know how to do our work. It’s better to start where we can fit in and then work our way up.”

“Doing the right thing when it is not popular or when it is not going to get everyone’s approval is not always easy, but I am convinced that if we truly care about other people, we will go ahead and take the risk anyway.”

“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.”

“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.”

“One reason I didn’t hold any grudges or harsh feelings toward Dad must have been that my mother seldom blamed him—at least not to us or in our hearing. I can hardly think of a time when she spoke against him.”

“Beware the abuse of Power. Both by those we disagree with, as well as those we may agree with”

“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.”

“To make the most out of life, all of us need to stop, think (and analyze), and use the talents God has given us.”

“THE EARLY BIRD GETS THE WORM”

“Having a ballot referendum on an important issue is a farce if a federal judge can throw out the results and impose his or her own will in place of the will of the people.”