“The Bible is the only Book in the world that predicts the future. The Bible is more modern than tomorrow morning’s newspaper.”

“I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness.”

“Friend, I am not suggesting at all. You see, I know now. Let us be frank. Our opinions were not honestly come by. We simply found ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas and plunged into it because it seemed modern and successful. At College, you know, we just started automatically writing the kind of essays that got good marks and saying the kind of things that won applause. When, in our whole lives, did we honestly face, in solitude, the one question on which all turned: whether after all the Supernatural might not in fact occur? When did we put up one moment's real resistance to the loss of our faith?”

“But you can wake a man only if he is really asleep; no effort that you may make will produce any effect upon him if he is merely pretending sleep. That”

“Failure results from bad breaks.”

“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.”

“Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.”

“God has a plan for everyone he created and none of his creations is meant to be purposeless. Every human being for that matter was brought forth with a specific and unique duty to uptake while he lives on earth.”

“No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.”

“Your most valuable asset can be your willingness to persist longer than anyone else.”

“Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.”

“We can get excited by thinking about what all we have or can have, OR we can get discouraged by thinking about what all we don't have.”

“Here's my strategy on the Cold War: we win, they lose.”

“Sexual overindulgence may not only destroy reason and willpower, but it may also lead to either temporary or permanent mental dysfunction.”

“You just have to take the first step , you don't have to see the whole staircase.”