I entered the diocesan seminary. I liked the Dominicans, and I had Dominican friends. But then I chose the Society of Jesus, which I knew well because the seminary was entrusted to the Jesuits. Three things in particular struck me about the Society: the missionary spirit, community and discipline.

When individual members of the team are highly disciplined, they can be trusted and, therefore, allowed to operate with very little oversight.

The arts don’t exist in isolation.

Ours is a nation of laws: of citizens who live under them and for the citizens who enforce them. So, to a community in Ferguson that is rightly hurting and looking for answers, let me call once again for us to seek some understanding rather than simply holler at each other. Let’s seek to heal rather than to wound each other.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

The reason children accept discipline from their parents is because they know their parents love them.

I do not raise brats!

I’ve got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.

Time was when they that feared the Lord spake often to one another; I am afraid that now they more often speak one against another.

No one can live without relationship. You may withdraw into the mountains, become a monk, a sannyasi, wander off into the desert by yourself, but you are related. You cannot escape from that absolute fact. You cannot exist in isolation.

Apart from the fact that any hardy exercise conduces much to the training and formation of a soldier, pig-sticking tends to give a man what is called a ‚stalker’s eye,‘ but which, par excellence, is the soldier’s eye.

The voting booth joint is a great leveler; the whole neighborhood – rich, poor, old, young, decrepit and spunky – they all turn out in one day.

I’m a people’s man – only the people matter.

If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.

Confidence comes from discipline and training.

All great change in America begins at the dinner table.

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.

There is only one sort of discipline, perfect discipline.

I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?

I advocate that every woman be a part of a circle, and a circle that meets at least once a month, or if you can’t do that, once every two months or every four months.

In Japan, the writers have made up a literary community, a circle, a society. I think 90 percent of Japan’s writers live in Tokyo. Naturally, they make a community. There are groups and customs, and so they are tied up in a way.

When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That’s one of the great feelings – to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue.

We cannot possibly let ourselves get frozen into regarding everyone we do not know as an absolute stranger.

Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.

To gather with God’s people in united adoration of the Father is as necessary to the Christian life as prayer.

My doorman is more important to me than any head of any company. He keeps us safe.

In military school, on day one you must memorize the mission of the Merchant Marine Academy.

My mother was a powerful influence. She made me toe the line. If I didn’t have a perfect report card, she showed her disappointment.

I have a big following among the biogeeks of this world. Nobody ever puts them in books.

In a long meter hymn, a singer – they call it ‚lays out a line.‘ And then the whole church joins in in repeating that line. And they form a wall of harmony so tight, you can’t wedge a pin between it.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help… Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business – you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That’s not going to happen if you care only about yourself.

I’m not going to change the world. You’re not going to change the world. But we can help – we can all help.

I doubt whether classical education ever has been or can be successfully carried out without corporal punishment.

There is no delight in owning anything unshared.

I’m not anti-middle-class in the slightest. Look at me! I am very pro people putting time and money and effort into trying to improve the world.

We have an obligation to help people that cannot help themselves. The mentally retarded, the physically retarded, et cetera.

I think many people in my community had very different kinds of mothers: they had mothers who acquiesced in the system of male and white-supremacist domination, and my mother never did. She just could not do it. It just wasn’t in her.

Chinese people need to be controlled; otherwise, they will do whatever they want.

Information helps you to see that you’re not alone. That there’s somebody in Mississippi and somebody in Tokyo who all have wept, who’ve all longed and lost, who’ve all been happy. So the library helps you to see, not only that you are not alone, but that you’re not really any different from everyone else.

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

Genius at first is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.

The army teaches boys to think like men.

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.

Still and all, why bother? Here’s my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

The suicide-bombing community is not absolutely 100 percent religious, but it is pretty nearly 100 percent religious.

To rule children by force is the technique of Satan, not of the Savior.

Even as you make progress, you need the discipline to keep from backtracking and sabotaging the success as it’s happening.

Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.

All my adult life people have been helping me.

If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn’t make your house look any better.

Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.

Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a church that finds new roads, that is able to step outside itself and go to those who do not attend Mass, to those who have quit or are indifferent.

There’s pros and cons of a big church. Cons is I don’t get to know everybody, I don’t get to go to their ballgame, I don’t get to marry everybody, but the pros are you get all this community, 800 ushers come in to serve, getting there at 7 in the morning on their day off and coming in on Saturday to make all those wafers.

Hip-hop is ever changing but you’ll always have the pack. And you’ll always have those people who are separated from the pack.

I want to destroy ownership in order that possession and enjoyment may be raised to the highest point in every section of the community.

Without discipline, there’s no life at all.

Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.

People who bowl vote. Bowlers are not the cultural elite.

I would venture to guess that the biggest reason creative types don’t produce isn’t because they don’t have vision… or talent… in most cases, it’s a lack of discipline.