“Friends who mock your dreams are not qualified to keep dusting your door step with their footprints every time.”

“If there is an effect in your life that you want more of, you merely need to trace it back to the causes and repeat the causes. If there is an effect in your life that you do not enjoy, you need to trace it back to the causes and get rid of them.”

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”

“To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me.”

“Adversity kills fearful people just by showing them its weapons. As to whether that weapon is fatal or fake, they don't care to know before they surrender!”

“Mainly, though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism, and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with a larger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. We lost the courts and wait for a White House scandal. And increasingly we feel the need to match the Republican right in stridency and hardball tactics. The accepted wisdom that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists these days goes like this: The Republican Party has been able to consistently win elections not by expanding its base but by vilifying Democrats, driving wedges into the electorate, energizing its right wing, and disciplining those who stray from the party line. If the Democrats ever want to get back into power, then they will have to take up the same approach. ...Ultimately, though, I believe any attempt by Democrats to pursue a more sharply partisan and ideological strategy misapprehends the moment we're in. I am convinced that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. For it's precisely the pursuit of ideological purity, the rigid orthodoxy and the sheer predictability of our current political debate, that keeps us from finding new ways to meet the challenges we face as a country. It's what keeps us locked in "either/or" thinking: the notion that we can have only big government or no government; the assumption that we must either tolerate forty-six million without health insurance or embrace "socialized medicine". It is such doctrinaire thinking and stark partisanship that have turned Americans off of politics. ”

“There is one quality that one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants and a burning desire to achieve it.” 

“Prayer is more than a plea, it is a place where we must spend time if we are to learn its power.”

“When everything is laid out neatly and in sequence, you will feel much more like getting on with the job.”

“When you are unsure whether or not something is wrong, ask yourself these questions: Does this glorify God? Can I offer a prayer of thanksgiving for it? Does it draw me closer to Christ, or does it make me preoccupied with this world? Will it harm my health or hurt me in some other way? Will it cause someone else to stumble spiritually or morally? I have never forgotten what a wise Christian said to me many years ago: “When in doubt—don’t!”

“I’m a big believer in hard work, grinding it out, and not stopping until it’s done,”

“If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, "that this would be the best of worlds if there were no religion in it.” 

“The people who can destroy a thing, they control it.”

“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his (sic)patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease”

“Greedy people ask, ask, ask, and rarely ever appreciate what they have already received. I do not believe that God will release us into the fullness of all that He has planned for us until we become thankful for what we have already been given.”