“The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the center of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.”

“No person has the right to rain on your dreams.”

“What I know for sure is that reading opens you up. It exposes you and gives you access to anything your mind can hold. What I love most about reading: It gives you the ability to reach higher ground. And keep climbing.”

“noncooperation with evil is just as much a moral duty as is cooperation with good.”

“You can’t stop people from thinking—but you can start them.”

“The human conscience is reliable only when it is guided by the Holy Spirit.”

“If your thoughts are as tall as the height of your ceiling, you can’t fly above your room.”

“The devotion of such titans of spirit as Lenin to an Ideal must bear fruit. The nobility of his selflessness will be an example through centuries to come, and his Ideal will reach perfection.”

“Your playing small does not serve the world. Who are you not to be great?” 

“If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.”

“One of the things I learned when I was negotiating was that until I changed myself, I could not change others.”

“One of the saddest statements in the Bible is when Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven. . . . Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not . . . done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ ” (Matthew 7:21–23).”

“Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilisation.”

“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.”

“Para madurar nuestra amistad, Dios la pondrá a prueba con periodos de aparente separación: momentos en que sentiremos que nos abandonó o nos olvidó.”