“When our daughter, Alexandra, was about three years old, she used to wake up at night and come down the stairs into our room. Of course, we would have to take her back to bed. For a few months she was waking up two or three times a night and coming down. This was not long after I took over for my father and started pastoring. I was learning to minister, and there was a lot of stress and change just with that, so I wasn’t sleeping much. One time I was telling Victoria, “We’ve just got to do something about Alexandra. She’s coming down so much. You know, I’m just so tired. I’m not getting enough sleep.” On and on. Victoria said something I’ll never forget. She said, “Joel, just remember, twenty years from now, you’ll give anything to hear those little footsteps coming down the stairs. You’ll give anything to have her wanting to come into your room.” That changed my whole perspective. I began looking forward”

“Fear of poverty is a state of mind, nothing else! But it is sufficient to destroy one’s chances of achievement in any undertaking, a truth which became painfully evident during the depression.”

“There are countless opportunities to comfort others, not only in the loss of a loved one, but also in the daily distress that so often creeps into our lives.”

“True success comes only when every generation continues to develop the next generation.”

Pooh! Grown-ups are always thinking of uninteresting explanations.”

“The right to search for the truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be the truth.”

“We expect rewards for goodness, and punishments for the bad things which we do. Often, they are not immediately”

“The potential beauty of human life is constantly made ugly by man's ever-recurring song of retaliation.”

“[God] created us free to choose how we would live . . . but leaves us free to pursue our own ends with tragic, natural consequences.”

“Well, Steve [Jobs]… I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbour named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”

“El curso de las cosas acontece para enseñarnos la fe. Sólo tenemos que obedecer. Hay claves para cada uno de nosotros, y si escuchamos con humildad, oiremos la palabra justa”

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.”

“If your mental attitude is negative, if you complain and find fault with others, it will offset whatever you do, even if you do more than you are paid to do.”

“Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”