“I believed that if you have the heart to make a difference, there is always an answer, but if you have a heart of indifference, there is never an answer.”

“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.”

“Those that hate goodness are sometimes nearer than those that know nothing at all about it and think they have it.”

“The question was not whether one should use his gun when his home was attacked, but whether it was tactically wise to use a gun while participating in an organized demonstration. If they lowered the banner of nonviolence, I said, Mississippi injustice would not be exposed and the moral issues would be obscured.”

“Status quo, you know, is Latin for 'the mess we're in'.”

“I am growing old enough not to care much for the MANNER of doing things.”

“You don't get drown by falling into a river. You get drown by remaining there. Falling accidentally and rising immediately was what distinguished Thomas Edison and Abraham Lincoln from the rest.”

“Faith activates God - Fear activates the Enemy.”

“Sitting in his old schoolroom on the sofa with little cushions on the arms and looking into Natasha's wildly eager eyes, Rostov was carried back into that world of home and childhood which had no meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the greatest pleasure in his life.”

“Movie and television stars lay down the law of fashions, manners, speech, and even moral behavior. It has been proven that a movie or a television program can brainwash.”

“Peace is the greatest weapon for development that any person can have.” 

“The measure of a leader is not the number of people who serve him but the number of people he serves.”

“The church holds the key to revival. It is within our grasp.”

“Nothing shapes your life more than the commitments you choose to make.” 

“The Creator never singles out an individual for an important service to mankind without first testing him, through struggle, in proportion to the nature of the service he is to render.”