“I want to make a difference with people who want to make a difference, doing something that makes a difference.”

“Peak performance is dependent on passion, grit, determination, and a willingness to do something poorly until you can do it well.”

“My father taught me to work, but not to love it. I never did like to work, and I don't deny it. I'd rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh -- anything but work.”

“Is that the name you wish, Muad’Dib?” Stilgar asked. “I am an Atreides,” Paul whispered, and then louder: “It’s not right that I give up entirely the name my father gave me. Could I be known among you as Paul-Muad’Dib?” “You are Paul-Muad’Dib,” Stilgar said.

“As citizens, we need to get beyond squabbling with one another about tactics. For example, instead of arguing about how fast the debt should be reduced, we should unite on the common ground that it ought to be reduced at all. As we fight over details, our children’s future is worsening. It’s time to focus on common ground and take swift action based on our agreement before our nation moves beyond saving.”

“The person who reads too much and uses his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking..”

“A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.”

“Talk about God can become dreary and lackluster if God isn’t in you. Church can become a drab thing and the Bible an irksome Book if the Holy Spirit does not illuminate your soul with His indwelling presence.”

“We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.”

“Do not wait: the time will never be 'just right'. Start where you stand, and work whatever tools you may have at your command and better tools will be found as you go along.”

“The mind should be kept peaceful. As the prophet Isaiah tells us, when the mind is stayed on the right things, it will be at rest.”

“When the opponent expand, I contract. When he contracts, I expand. And, when there is an opportunity, I do not hit - it hits all by itself.”

“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.”

“It's not where you start or even what happens to you along the way that's important. What is important is that you persevere and never give up on yourself.”

“They compose poems to their knives.”