“Comfort and prosperity have never enriched the world as much as adversity has.”

“«Ayude a muchas personas a tener éxito, y usted también lo tendrá».”

“I never try to defend religion. Religion has spawned wars. Many so-called religious people have been characterized by prejudice, pride, and bickering . . . I would call you to a simple faith in Jesus, who said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

“When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you'd like them to be.”

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated

“The key to liberation is within. — Each man binds himself; the fetters are ignorance, laziness, preoccupation with self, and fear. He must liberate himself, while accepting the fact that we are of this world, so that “In summer we sweat; in winter we shiver.”

“Don't feel pity for those who will feel disappointed because you have scored! You were trained not to entertain a pity party but to excel in a winning game!”

“I don't like that man. I must get to know him better.”

“But whenever I tried to pin down this idea of self-esteem, the specific qualities we hoped to inculcate, the specific means by which we might feel good about ourselves, the conversation always seemed to follow a path of infinite regress. Did you dislike yourself because of your color or because you couldn’t read and couldn’t get a job? Or perhaps it was because you were unloved as a child—only, were you unloved because you were too dark? Or too light? Or because your mother shot heroin into her veins … and why did she do that anyway? Was the sense of emptiness you felt a consequence of kinky hair or the fact that your apartment had no heat and no decent furniture? Or was it because deep down you imagined a godless universe? Maybe one couldn’t avoid such questions on the road to personal salvation. What I doubted was that all the talk about self-esteem could serve as the centerpiece of an effective black politics. It demanded too much honest self-reckoning from people; without such honesty, it easily degenerated into vague exhortation. Perhaps with more self-esteem fewer blacks would be poor, I thought to myself, but I had no doubt that poverty did nothing for our self-esteem. Better to concentrate on the things we might all agree on. Give that black man some tangible skills and a job. Teach that black child reading and arithmetic in a safe, well-funded school. With the basics taken care of, each of us could search for our own sense of self-worth.”

“Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; give the world the best you've got anyway.”

“Exercise, lose weight, test your blood sugar, or whatever. Do it without motivation and then guess what. After you start doing the thing, that’s when the motivation comes and makes it easy for you to keep on doing”

“Quizá haya cometido muchos errores, pero le diré: La misericordia de Dios es mayor que cualquier error que haya cometido. Quizá haya perdido años de su vida tomando malas decisiones, pero le diré que Dios todavía tiene una manera de llevarle hasta su destino final. Quizá haya tenido una adicción desde su adolescencia, pero le diré que el poder del Dios Altísimo puede romper cualquier adicción y liberarle. Eso es lo que significa repartir bondad: levantar al caído, animar al desalentado, tomarse tiempo para enjugar las lágrimas.”

“Quando entendemos o ponto de vista do próximo — entendemos o que ele está tentando fazer nove entre dez vezes ele está tentando fazer o que é certo.”

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”

“La Biblia dice: «Así que no nos fijamos en lo visible sino en lo invisible, ya que lo que se ve es pasajero, mientras que lo que no se ve es eterno».”