“We have arrived at the point where we are flippant about God. We tell jokes about Him. God’s name is used so often in profanity in the entertainment world that sometimes it is embarrassing to watch television.”

“My parents constantly drummed into me the importance of judging people as individuals. There was no more grievous sin at our household than a racial slur or other evidence of religious or racial intolerance. A lot of it, I think, was because my dad had learned what discrimination was like firsthand. He’d grown up in an era when some stores still had signs at their door saying, NO DOGS OR IRISHMEN ALLOWED. When my brother and I were growing up, there were still ugly tumors of racial bigotry in much of America, including the corner of Illinois where we lived. At our one local movie theater, blacks and whites had to sit apart—the blacks in the balcony. My mother and father urged my brother and me to bring home our black playmates, to consider them equals, and to respect the religious views of our friends, whatever they were. My brother’s best friend was black, and when they went to the movies, Neil sat with him in the balcony. My mother always taught us: “Treat thy neighbor as you would want your neighbor to treat you,” and “Judge everyone by how they act, not what they are.” Once my father checked into a hotel during a shoe-selling trip and a clerk told him: “You’ll like it here, Mr. Reagan, we don’t permit a Jew in the place.” My father, who told us the story later, said he looked at the clerk angrily and picked up his suitcase and left. “I’m a Catholic,” he said. “If it’s come to the point where you won’t take Jews, then some day you won’t take me either.” Because it was the only hotel in town, he spent the night in his car during a winter blizzard and I think it may have led to his first heart attack.”

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing” 

“I would just as soon die now, but I haven't done anything yet to be remembered by”

“Everybody eventually surrenders to something or someone. If not to God, you will surrender to the opinions or expectations of others, to money, to resentment, to fear, or to your own pride, lusts, or ego. You were designed to worship God — and if you fail to worship him, you will create other things (idols) to give your life to. You are free to choose what you surrender to, but you are not free from the consequences of that choice. E. Stanley Jones said, “If you don’t surrender to Christ, you surrender to chaos.”

“It's when the seed grows up that it is known as a tree. Nobody calls the "seedlings" as "trees" and no seedling is ever useful because it doesn't produce fruits! You got to grow up!”

“it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error

“Suppose a problem in psychology was set: What can be done to persuade the men of our time — Christians, humanitarians or, simply, kindhearted people — into committing the most abominable crimes with no feeling of guilt? There could be only one way: to do precisely what is being done now, namely, to make them governors, inspectors, officers, policemen, and so forth; which means, first, that they must be convinced of the existence of a kind of organization called ‘government service,’ allowing men to be treated like inanimate objects and banningthereby all human brotherly relations with them; and secondly, that the people entering this ‘government service’ must be so unified that the responsibility for their dealings with men would never fall on any one of them individually.”

“your poverty is serving no one. If you’re a charitable person, you’d be a whole lot more charitable if you had lots of money.”

“We faced it and did not resist. The storm passed through us and around us. It's gone, but we remain.”

“Some people wonder all their lives if they've made a difference. The Marines don't have that problem.”

“Are you disappointed with society? If you are, I challenge you to take the first step. I challenge you to look at yourself.”

“This victory alone is not the change we seek; it is only the chance for us to make that change.”

“The great commandment is that we preach the gospel to every creature, but neither God nor the Bible says anything about forcing it down people's throats.”

“The less we have, the more we give. Seems absurd, but it's the logic of love.”