I made a decision when my father passed away that I was going to be who God made me to be and not try to preach like my father.

Remember, always give your best. Never get discouraged. Never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you. But those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself.

What’s really hard is that you could care a lot for someone and not want to live with him anymore.

I approach love differently now that I know it’s hard for it to work out.

I think that’s something that all mothers have to deal with, especially single mothers. We work, and we have to leave the kids behind. And I think that’s one of the reasons that we, not only as women but as families, we have to advocate for early childhood education for all of our children.

I am just happy to be part of the Nike family.

Treat your children like the blessings they are or don’t have them at all.

In matters of truth the fact that you don’t want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

I gave in, and admitted that God was God.

I am persuaded, you will permit me to observe, that the path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction.

Marriage and family are ordained of God. The family is the most important social unit in time and in eternity. Under God’s great plan of happiness, families can be sealed in temples and be prepared to return to dwell in His holy presence forever. That is eternal life!

When you stop caring what people think, you lose your capacity for connection. When you’re defined by it, you lose our capacity for vulnerability.

A vow is a purely religious act which cannot be taken in a fit of passion. It can be taken only with a mind purified and composed and with God as witness.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

I always like to take my time and examine the two candidates, see not only the two candidates but the policies they will bring in, the people they will bring in, who they might appoint to the Supreme Court, and look at the whole range of issues before making a decision.

I do not think psychoanalysis has a scientific basis. If we can’t explain why a cockroach decides to turn left, how can we explain why a human being decides to do something?

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

I am not promising that God will give you everything you want. There are times when we want things that God knows would not be good for us.

I don’t dislike any of my exes. If I took time to form a relationship, it’s gonna hurt when we move on, but are you puttin‘ White-Out over all that beautiful time together? That was real time in your life. It’s connected to where you are today.

My work is the only ground I’ve ever had to stand on. To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation, but I’m working on the foundation.

For a person who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, ‚Here I am, read me.‘ Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.

One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.

The older I get, the more important the eternal becomes to me personally.

Indeed, it is as important to learn how to receive a blessing as it is to be willing to give one.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can’t make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

I’m working on my life story. I’m not decided if it’s going to be a musical or a movie with music in it.

I’m not afraid to look like an idiot.

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.

Before the throne of the Almighty, man will be judged not by his acts but by his intentions. For God alone reads our hearts.

My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.

The devil is a peace stealer, and he works hard to set us up to get upset. But we can learn how to change our approach so we don’t live upset all of the time. And Jesus gives us the best example to follow.

I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.

To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.

Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion.

We do need women in civic life. We do need women to run for office, to be in political office. We need a feminist to be at the table when decisions are being made so that the right decisions will be made.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

I base a lot of decisions on my gut, and going with an independent label was a good one.

If we could just find out who’s in charge, we could kill him.

Don’t talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.

I don’t think there’s anyone who would say they don’t want or need more of God’s power in their life.

I love my friends and my past, and it’s made me who I am.

The issues that cross a president’s desk are never easy. The easy questions don’t even get to the president.

I believed in God when cancer come to me. Now when I speak, I speak with authority because I’ve been there.

You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

I’m very at ease, and I like it. I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn’t think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that’s happening to me. I’m rather surprised at who I am, because I’m actually like my dad!

There’s plenty about God that I don’t understand and can’t explain. But I come back to my core belief that God is good, that He’s for us.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

The Sisters of Notre Dame at St. Aloysius Grade School influenced my life tremendously. This was due to the fact that they encouraged you always to make sure that God is the focus of your life, and they didn’t allow you to do anything except to the very best of your ability.

When I was growing up, there was nobody in my family – not even my mother – who I could look to and be like, ‚I know you’ve never said anything homophobic.‘ So, you know, you worry about people in the business who you’ve heard talk that way. Some of my heroes coming up talk recklessly like that.

I’m afraid to fail again.

I use a stream-of-consciousness approach; if you don’t censor yourself, you end up with what you’re most concerned about, but you haven’t filtered it through your conscious mind. Then you craft it.

A game is like a mirror that allows you to look at yourself.

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

Prison life, fortunately, I spent a lot of years, about 18 years with other prisoners, and, as I say, they enriched your soul.

If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.

If you were the President of the United States or the Queen of England – you couldn’t have a person who would be more protective than my mother was for me. Which meant really that I could dare to do all sorts of things.

Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.