I have learned from personal experience that putting trust in God means there will be some unanswered questions. That was a hard lesson for me because I naturally want to understand everything… to know what’s going on so I can feel like I’m in control.

I’m going to let God be the judge of who goes to heaven and hell.

Plenty of people wish to become devout, but no one wishes to be humble.

Many people find the universe confusing – it’s not.

Fear of death makes us devoid both of valour and religion. For want of valour is want of religious faith.

Think of what you are, you Christians. You are God’s children; you are joint heirs with Christ. The ‚many mansions‘ are for you; the palms and harps of the glorified are for you. You have a share in all that Christ has and is and shall be.

My friend has a baby. I’m recording all the noises he makes so later I can ask him what he meant.

Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

It’s OK to have your eggs in one basket as long as you control what happens to that basket.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.

My relationship to power and authority is that I’m all for it. People need somebody to watch over them. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave.

I believe that the greatest form of prayer is praise to God.

The just is close to the people’s heart, but the merciful is close to the heart of God.

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?

I believe many people feel like God is mad at them.

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.

I don’t set out to write about spirituality; I am free to do something different every time.

Scripture is filled with examples of men and women whom God used late in life, often with great impact – men and women who refused to use old age as an excuse to ignore what God wanted them to do.

Free will carried many a soul to hell, but never a soul to heaven.

Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.

It’s a tragedy, in a way, that Americans are brought up to think that they cannot feel for other people and other beings just because they are different. They think they’re different. It’s very limiting.

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.

People just overshoot trying to find God. They’re going outside and trying everything. They don’t realize that it’s right inside themselves.

I’m very careful about saying who would and wouldn’t go to heaven. I don’t know.

A faithful woman can become a devoted daughter of God – more concerned with being righteous than with being selfish, more anxious to exercise compassion than to exercise dominion, more committed to integrity than to notoriety. And she knows of her own infinite worth.

Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand.

The Bible says to ‚fear not,‘ but this doesn’t mean you should never feel scared. It means when you do feel fear, keep going forward and do what you are supposed to do. Or as I like to say, do it afraid.

It’s presumptuous to say you know how somebody feels.

You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

When doubt comes against us, we have to lift up the shield of faith. We do this when we open our mouth and say what God’s Word says, rather than grumbling and complaining about the problem.

Christmas is the perfect time to celebrate the love of God and family and to create memories that will last forever. Jesus is God’s perfect, indescribable gift. The amazing thing is that not only are we able to receive this gift, but we are able to share it with others on Christmas and every other day of the year.

Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood – never.

God sent me on earth. He send me to do something, and nobody can stop me. If God want to stop me, then I stop. Man never can.

God is on my side, and that’s all I need. I get up in the morning, I pray to God. I don’t pray to the president, the governor, the mayor, no black caucus, no this and that. I pray to God, and that’s the end of it.

To understand the power of the priesthood, we must know its limitations.

We may have our private opinions but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?

I tell you the solemn truth, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so difficult to accept for a working proposition as any one of the axioms of physics.

God is the same God, always and everywhere. He is omnipresent not virtually only, but also substantially, for virtue cannot subsist without substance.

When you make a mistake and the devil comes and tells you ‚You’re no good,‘ you don’t have to take on the guilt and condemnation he wants to put on you. No! You can immediately confess your mistake to God, thank Him for forgiving you and cleansing you with the blood of Jesus, and move forward in the victory of His grace and forgiveness.

I believe that God put us in this jolly world to be happy and enjoy life.

Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach.

It’s the way I study – to understand something by trying to work it out or, in other words, to understand something by creating it. Not creating it one hundred percent, of course; but taking a hint as to which direction to go but not remembering the details. These you work out for yourself.

Mormonism is a little different, but I still see them as brothers in Christ.

If one accepts the terms of the covenant and obeys God’s law, he or she receives the blessings associated with the covenant.

On a spiritual level, it’s as though with my sighted eye I see what’s before me, and with my unsighted eye I see what’s hidden. It’s illuminated life more than darkened it.

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock and roll or Christianity.

I think I had a mild case of Asperger’s as a younger guy, but that typically just wears off after a while. For some people, anyway.

We should understand the source of our authority and something of the keys that control its power.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

Fighting for one’s freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

I particularly admire are Mark Twain and Jerome K. Jerome who wrote in a certain tone of voice which was humane and understanding of humanity, but always ready to annotate its little foibles. I think I’d lay my cards down on that, and say that it’s that that I’m trying to do.

Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god; but who knows my god?

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

God wants to bless us where we are.