“A leader who sows confidence will reap excellency and legacy. A leader who sows fear will reap stagnancy or complacency.”

“Sometimes we are afraid because success puts pressure on us to continue to succeed.”

“Some people die and you realize that the only mark they left on earth are the tomb stones under which they lie. The impacts you make on earth should be something worthy to improve lives.”

“Until you get enough of enough, the "enough" that is never enough, you dare not quit! If your good is better, your better can be best; your best too can become excellent!”

“Well, if he had ever read the Bible, he should know a sinner does not get healed spiritually. The human spirit of the lost man or woman is not healed—it’s reborn. That person becomes a new creature in Christ Jesus. Old things are passed away. All things become new.”

“...What I have denied and what my reason compels me to deny, is the existence of a Being throned above us as a god, directing our mundane affairs in detail, regarding us as individuals, punishing us, rewarding us as human judges might. When the churches learn to take this rational view of things, when they become true schools of ethics and stop teaching fables, they will be more effective than they are to-day... If they would turn all that ability to teaching this one thing – the fact that honesty is best, that selfishness and lies of any sort must surely fail to produce happiness – they would accomplish actual things. Religious faiths and creeds have greatly hampered our development. They have absorbed and wasted some fine intellects. That creeds are getting to be less and less important to the average mind with every passing year is a good sign, I think, although I do not wish to talk about what is commonly called theology. The criticisms which have been hurled at me have not worried me. A man cannot control his beliefs. If he is honest in his frank expression of them, that is all that can in justice be required of him. Professor Thomson and a thousand others do not in the least agree with me. His criticism of me, as I read it, charged that because I doubted the soul’s immortality, or ‘personality,’ as he called it, my mind must be abnormal, ‘pathological,’ in other, words, diseased... I try to say exactly what I honestly believe to be the truth, and more than that no man can do. I honestly believe that creedists have built up a mighty structure of inaccuracy, based, curiously, on those fundamental truths which I, with every honest man, must not alone admit but earnestly acclaim. I have been working on the same lines for many years. I have tried to go as far as possible toward the bottom of each subject I have studied. I have not reached my conclusions through study of traditions; I have reached them through the study of hard fact. I cannot see that unproved theories or sentiment should be permitted to have influence in the building of conviction upon matters so important. Science proves its theories or it rejects them. I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God. I earnestly believe that I am right; I cannot help believing as I do... I cannot accept as final any theory which is not provable. The theories of the theologians cannot be proved. Proof, proof! That is what I always have been after; that is what my mind requires before it can accept a theory as fact. Some things are provable, some things disprovable, some things are doubtful. All the problems which perplex us, now, will, soon or late, be solved, and solved beyond a question through scientific investigation. The thing which most impresses me about theology is that it does not seem to be investigating. It seems to be asserting, merely, without actual study. ...Moral teaching is the thing we need most in this world, and many of these men could be great moral teachers if they would but give their whole time to it, and to scientific search for the rock-bottom truth, instead of wasting it upon expounding theories of theology which are not in the first place firmly based. What we need is search for fundamentals, not reiteration of traditions born in days when men knew even less than we do now.

“Thinking about My Purpose POINT TO PONDER: Happiness is my choice. I don’t need anyone’s approval to be happy. VERSE TO REMEMBER: “Even if my father and mother abandon me, the Lord will hold me close.” PSALM 27:10 (NLT) QUESTION TO CONSIDER: Whose opinion matters most to me? Whose approval am I living for?”

“Don’t be thick, all right? I’m not just talking about one time. Look, I ask Monica out, she says no. I say okay … your shit’s not so hot anyway.”

“We have a mandate to speak out against “the sin that so easily entangles” [Hebrews 12:1 NIV]; for though we are not of the world, we are still in it.”

“I still have my feet on the ground, I just wear better shoes.”

“Drop down all those imaginations and feelings that "Success is built on Success". A HERO can be built from ZERO. Begin from where you stand with what you have!”

“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.

“What do you have that God hasn’t given you? And if all you have is from God, why boast as though you have accomplished something on your own?”

“The fact is that your productivity begins to decline after eight or nine hours of work. For this reason, working long hours into the night, although it is sometimes necessary, means that you are usually producing less and less in more and more time. The more tired you become, the worse the quality of your work will be and the more mistakes you will make. At a certain point, you can reach “the wall” and simply be unable to continue, like a battery that is run down.”

“Be worried if you always flock in the company of people who peel off other people's skins with their teeth in their absence. A time will come when they'll try to pick a bite on you too!”