Some of My Favorite Quotes
One thing I've learned in reflecting on the quotes of others is that people with whom I may disagree on one subject I can agree on another.
Bible Both/And Calling and Mission Challenges Character Critics Democracy Discipline Faith Humility Justice Leadership Learning Love Marriage and Family Overcoming Risk Simplicity Totalitarianism Truth Vision Uncategorized
"He who has God and everything, has no more than he who has God alone" - C.S. Lewis
"The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any word in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. 'My God,' you will say, 'if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?' Here in lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament."
- Søren Kierkegard, Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Søren Kierkegaard, ed. Charles E. Moore (Farmington, PA: Plough, 2002), p.201.
"Dream
as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today." - James Dean
"Work as if you were to live 100 years, pray as if you were to die tomorrow." - Benjamin Franklin
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
"Don't bother to give God instructions; just report for
duty." - Corrie Ten Boom
"Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes real happiness. It is not obtained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose." - Helen Keller
"Only one life, 'twill soon be past, Only what's done for Christ will last." - C.T. Studd
"Every person I meet today will spend eternity somewhere!" - Mark Cahill
"Give me 100 men who hate
sin and nothing else, and love God and nothing else, and I will change the
world." - John Wesley (Wesley worked with 140 leaders and transformed
English culture in his lifetime.)
"To the world you may
be one person, but to one person you may be the world." -
unknown
We ask, "Where does God fit into the story of my life?" when the real question is, "Where does my little life fall into the great story of God's mission?" - Christopher J.H. Wright
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone make the difference." - Calvin Coolidge
"Are you indifferent to everything, but God's will?" - Steve Brooks
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." - Margaret Mead, anthropologist
"We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are." - Max De Pree
"I asked God for strength, that I might achieve, I was made weak, that I might learn humbly to obey ... I asked for health, that I might do greater things, I was given infirmity, that I might do better things ... I asked for riches, that I might be happy, I was given poverty, that I might be wise ... I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men, I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God ... I asked for all things, that I might enjoy life, I was given life, that I might enjoy all things ... I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I had hoped for. Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered. I am among all men, most richly blessed." - Anonymous Confederate Soldier.
"Life
isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...it's about learning to dance in the
rain." - unknown
"When things get tough, always remember...Faith doesn't get you around
trouble, it gets you through it!" - a
recent widow
"God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain, but without stain." - C.S. Lewis
"You never really know that Christ is all you need, till Christ is all you have." - Plaque on a wall in the Philippines
Challenges to the Gospel:
"The chief danger that confronts the coming
century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ,
forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without
God, heaven without hell." ― William Booth
"It is not scientific doubt, not atheism, not pantheism, not agnosticism, that in our day and in this land is likely to quench the light of the gospel. It is a proud, sensuous, selfish, luxurious, church-going, hollow-hearted prosperity." - Frederic D. Huntington
"It's easy to do God's work but difficult be a man or woman of God" - Dick Hillis
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." - Abraham Lincoln
"It doesn't matter if you can win battles if you can't win the battle within yourself." - Carlos Acutis
"You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something in your life." - Winston Churchill
"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly...who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotions, who spend himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never known either victory or defeat." - Teddy Roosevelt
"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." - Mark Twain [Samuel Langhornne Clemens] (1835-1910)
"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." - Voltaire
"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)
"In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." - Martin Luther King Jr.
“Rulers who are guilty of ... encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority, and are tyrants. The people who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves.” - James Madison
"It will be conceded that a Christian's first duty is to God. It then follows, as a matter of course, that it is his duty to carry his Christian code of morals to the polls and vote them. Whenever he shall do that, he will not find himself voting for an unclean man, a dishonest man. If Christians would vote their duty to God at the polls, they would carry every election, and do it with ease. Their prodigious power would be quickly realized and recognized, and afterward there would be no unclean candidates upon any ticket, and graft would cease. If the Christians of America could be persuaded to vote God and a clean ticket, it would bring about moral revolution that would be incalculably beneficent. It would save the country." - Mark Twain (at a time Christians were in a near majority)
"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race." - Calvin Coolidge
"As any seafarer knows, from galley slave to admiral, running a tight ship is immensely preferable to going down with it." - unknown
Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase. -Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The graveyards are full of indispensable men. " - Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)
"Every
saint has a past, every sinner a future." - Paul Dzubinski
"Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian. - unknown
"A leader is a dealer in hope." - Napoleon
"A vision without an action plan is simply an hallucination." - Gerry Seale
"However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results." - Winston Churchill. (Here are a dozen other great Churchillisms!)
"There comes a time when every great plan degenerates into hard work." - any great leader :-)
"If your actions
inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more - you are a
leader." ~ John Quincy Adams
"The level of thinking that will get us out of our predicament must be of a different kind than the level of thinking that got us into our predicament." - Einstein
"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so" - Douglas Adams
"Try to learn something about everything and everything about something." - Thomas Henry Huxley
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but in seeing with new eyes." - Marcel Proust
Love:
"We can do no great things, just small things with great love. It is not how much you do, but how much love you put into doing it." - Mother Teresa
"Small deeds
done are better than great deeds planned." - Peter Marshall
"If you want to change the world, go home and love your family" - Mother Teresa
"Obstacles are the things you see when you take your eyes off your goals." - unknown
"One who fears God is not at liberty to give up." - William Wilberforce, champion against slavery
"First it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done." - J. Hudson Taylor, missionary to China
"Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right." - Henry Ford
“Never give in – never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” - Winston Churchill
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power.” Ephesians 6:10
Risk:
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off your bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain
For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn't give you a fig.
But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity I would give anything I have. - Oliver Wendell Holmes
"We must make things as
simple as possible, but not simpler." - Einstein
"Political correctness is tyranny with manners."- Charlton Heston
In his pamphlet "Common Sense," published prior to the American Revolution, Thomas Paine wrote: "Men who look upon themselves as born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent. Selected from the rest of mankind, their minds are early poisoned by importance. And the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests. And when they succeed in the government, they are frequently the most ignorant and unfit (to govern) of any throughout the dominions." Paine was not a monarchist: "For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have the right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others for ever, and though himself might deserve some decent degree of honors of his contemporaries, yet his descendants might be far too unworthy to inherit them."
"Let your credo be this," wrote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, "Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me."
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both." - US President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts."
"It ain't
what people don't know that causes the most trouble; it's what they know that
ain't so." - Mark Twain
"I do not feel obliged to believe that
the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended
us to forgo their use."- Galileo Galileo
"I can do things you cannot, you can do things I cannot;
together we can do great things." ~Mother Teresa
"If your vision
doesn't scare you, then both your vision and your God are too small"- Brother
Andrew
"Start by doing what's necessary; Then do what's possible; And suddenly you are doing the impossible." - Francis of Assisi
"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it."- Chinese Proverb
"Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare." - Japanese Proverb
“Nobody escapes being wounded. We are all wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not, ‘How can we hide our wounds?’ so we don’t have to be embarrassed, but ‘How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?’ When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.” - Henri Nouwen
"I want to know God more than the answers to my questions." - a wise seeker
"You may gain by taking
You may gain by giving
But what you gain by giving can never be taken away."- Janis
Reinis (Latvian poet, died c.
1947)
RISK
more than others think is safe.
CARE more than others think is wise.
DREAM more than others think is
practical.
EXPECT more than others think is
possible.
-Cadet maxim, West Point
Military Academy
"The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating - in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as a barrier to your life." - Anne Morris
"God is dead"--Neitzche
"Neitzche is dead"--God
"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." - C.S. Lewis)
"My Christ died for me, what did Muhammad do for you?" - Asia Bibi Pakistani mother of five facing execution for having drunk from the same water supply as her Muslim neighbours, an act considered blasphemous under Sharia law
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Life is what happens to you while you are making and implementing your plans" - Art Linkletter
Television personality Art Linkletter was in a nursing home where a elderly woman in a wheelchair came up to him and began chatting. After a few moments of small-talk Art asked, "Do you know who I am?" "No," she replied, "But don't worry, if you go to the front-desk they tell you."
"Life is not a journey to
the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well
preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up,
totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming -- WOW--What a Ride!" -
unknown
Murray Moerman (