“Your behavior will guide the behavior of the other members of your team or the people in your organization.”

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”

“Christianity has become so respectable and so conventional that it is now insipid. The salt has lost its flavor.”

“Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. EPHESIANS 6:14–15 NIV”

“There are two masters, and you have to choose which master you are going to serve.”

“In speaking of this desire for our own far off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter. Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

“To get to know a country, you must have direct contact with the earth. It's futile to gaze at the world through a car window.”

“A leader who sows confidence will reap excellency and legacy. A leader who sows fear will reap stagnancy or complacency.”

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

“Sin un propósito, la vida es una marcha sin sentido, un movimiento sin dirección y sucesos sin motivos. La vida sin propósito es trivial, insignificante e inútil.”

“Anxiety in a man’s heart weighs it down, but an encouraging word makes it glad. PROVERBS 12:25”

“For a moment, the sensation of coolness and the moisture were blessed relief. Then, as his planet killed him, it occurred to Kynes that his father and all the other scientists were wrong, that the most persistent principles of the universe were accident and error.”

“The state was made for man, not man for state.”

“There are many rivers to cross to our successful destinations. Never fear the crocodiles. They may look frightful, but they will not harm you. You will get there! With the right attitude, you ignore the ugly face of the shore and you can paddle your boat to the right destination!”

“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”