“Let your hands be clean; God loves clean hands and no wonder cleanliness is next to Godliness.”

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”

“Occasionally someone will ask me about how ego fits into the leadership equation. They’ll want to know what keeps a leader from having a huge ego. I think the answer lies in each leader’s pathway to leadership. If people paid their dues and gave their best in obscurity, ego is usually not a problem.”

“From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that we are here for the sake of each other - above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.”

“Let us love one another, for love is from God; and he who loves [his fellowman] is born of God and is progressively coming to know and understand God.”

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.”

“This election is about the past vs. the future. It's about whether we settle for the same divisions and distractions and drama that passes for politics today or whether we reach for a politics of common sense and innovation, a politics of shared sacrifice and shared prosperity. There are those who will continue to tell us that we can't do this, that we can't have what we're looking for, that we can't have what we want, that we're peddling false hopes. But here is what I know. I know that when people say we can't overcome all the big money and influence in Washington, I think of that elderly woman who sent me a contribution the other day, an envelope that had a money order for $3.01 along with a verse of scripture tucked inside the envelope. So don't tell us change isn't possible. That woman knows change is possible. When I hear the cynical talk that blacks and whites and Latinos can't join together and work together, I'm reminded of the Latino brothers and sisters I organized with and stood with and fought with side by side for jobs and justice on the streets of Chicago. So don't tell us change can't happen. When I hear that we'll never overcome the racial divide in our politics, I think about that Republican woman who used to work for Strom Thurmond, who is now devoted to educating inner city-children and who went out into the streets of South Carolina and knocked on doors for this campaign. Don't tell me we can't change. Yes, we can. Yes, we can change. Yes, we can. Yes, we can heal this nation. Yes, we can seize our future. And as we leave this great state with a new wind at our backs and we take this journey across this great country, a country we love, with the message we carry from the plains of Iowa to the hills of New Hampshire, from the Nevada desert to the South Carolina coast, the same message we had when we were up and when we were down, that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we will hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubt and fear and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the American people in three simple words -- yes, we can.”

“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”

“I can honestly say that every gift I’ve ever given has brought at least as much happiness to me as it has to the person I’ve given it to. I give as I feel. Throughout the year, that may mean mailing a handwritten note to someone who didn’t expect it. Or sending a great new lotion I just discovered, or delivering a book of poetry with a pretty bow. It doesn’t matter what the thing is; what matters is how much of yourself goes into the giving, so that when the gift is gone, the spirit of you lingers

“What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience.”

“We all need to realize that we're on a journey, and we are making progress.” 

“Why worry about things you can't control when you can keep yourself busy controlling the things that depend on you?”

“You may hesitate, wondering whether you will have strength to live for God. Don’t worry. God will give you what you need if you will just make the choice to live for him.”

“Worldliness is an inner attitude that puts self at the center of life instead of God.”

“Knowledge has no value except that which can be gained from its application towards some worthy end.”