My dad had a church of 90 people when I was born. It was just, over the years it continued to grow.

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.

Developing nations want to become developed nations.

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.

The reason that I’m here at all is because of my relationship with my family and their encouragement of me to be a musician and to work hard. As long as I stay there in that space, I can do anything. That’s my truth.

Synergy is what happens when one plus one equals ten or a hundred or even a thousand! It’s the profound result when two or more respectful human beings determine to go beyond their preconceived ideas to meet a great challenge.

Dream and you shall become.

As more airlines consolidated and grew larger and more focused on the bottom line, flying in the U.S. became an awful experience. Despite moves to block our airline from flying, Virgin America began service in August 2007 – with the goal of making flying good again.

My dad was like a stage mother he always pushed me to do what I wanted.

To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection: it is plunder.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.

If thy brother wrongs thee, remember not so much his wrong-doing, but more than ever that he is thy brother.

Of course, individual change doesn’t make much difference in a holistic picture… but we need both systemic change and individual change.

I’m not very articulate.

Practice yourself, for heaven’s sake in little things, and then proceed to greater.

I refuse to feel guilty. I feel guilty about too much in my life but not about money. I went through periods when I had nothing, so somebody in my family has to get stinkin‘ wealthy.

I may not be where I want to be, but thank God I am not where I used to be.

Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.

When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon – all served with black beans and rice. It’s festive but different.

I mean, families are weird.

An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.

Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.

The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.

I want to – more than anything – to create a moment that people will never forget. Not for me, but for themselves. That’s what I remember about great Super Bowl performances in the past, when you really get lost in the moment with your family.

Don’t ever play yourself.

I’m a very strong believer in listening and learning from others.

My mother raised me with God. We were poor financially, but we were rich spiritually.

More than anything else, I want the folks back at home to think right of me.

I was probably tall as a child, but I just stopped growing.

You can change your world by changing your words… Remember, death and life are in the power of the tongue.

Better is the enemy of good.

A leader who confines his role to his people’s experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people’s experience runs the risk of not being understood.

I grew up upper-class. Private school. My dad had a Jaguar. We’re African-American, and we work together as a family, so people assume we’re like the Jacksons. But I didn’t have parents using me to get out of a bad situation.

To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation. But I’m working on the foundation.

We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems, for conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.

One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.

God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another.

No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

People think that at the top there isn’t much room. They tend to think of it as an Everest. My message is that there is tons of room at the top.

It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal.

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.

Being too good is apt to be uninteresting.

If you have the insight of non-self, if you have the insight of impermanence, you should make that insight into a concentration that you keep alive throughout the day. Then what you say, what you think, and what you do will then be in the light of that wisdom and you will avoid making mistakes and creating suffering.

We’re running the company to serve more people.

You know, my sister sings, my brother plays drums in my band. My whole family is a bunch of musicians.

Few people realize that luck is created.

Change in all things is sweet.

I know why we’re strong. I know why we have held together; I know why we are united: it’s because there’s always been a growing middle class.

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.

I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk.

My mother was a full-time mother. She didn’t have much of her own career, her own life, her own experiences… everything was for her children. I will never be as good a mother as she was. She was just grace incarnate. She was the most generous, loving – she’s better than me.

Let the path be open to talent.

You have to dream before your dreams can come true.

We will always tend to fulfill our own expectation of ourselves.

Never confuse motion with action.

Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.

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.

Anyone who is to find Christ must first find the church. How could anyone know where Christ is and what faith is in him unless he knew where his believers are?