The decision to serve a mission will shape the spiritual destiny of the missionary, his or her spouse, and their posterity for generations to come. A desire to serve is a natural outcome of one’s conversion, worthiness, and preparation.

Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, – till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

I can’t tell you the number of times I looked down at what was going on on the ground, or I was engaged in a fight somewhere, and I knew within a couple of minutes how I was going to screw up the enemy. And I knew it because I’d done so much reading.

Bad seed is a robbery of the worst kind: for your pocket-book not only suffers by it, but your preparations are lost and a season passes away unimproved.

To secure peace is to prepare for war.

Forethought we may have, undoubtedly, but not foresight.

Conversion is not my intention. Changing religion is not easy. You may develop some kind of confusion or difficulties.

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to.

Basically it starts with four months of training, just basic stretching, kicking and punching. Then you come to the choreography and getting ready to put the dance together.

WikiLeaks is a service to the population. Assange should get an award for – presidential medal of honor.

When I prepare, I am not messing around. I find the right places, the right people, and the right environment. Iceland is one of those places.

Every person above the ordinary has a certain mission that they are called to fulfill.

Use power to help people. For we are given power not to advance our own purposes nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just use of power and it is to serve people.

He who has a task to perform must know how to take sides, or he is quite unworthy of it.

I never had to choose a subject – my subject rather chose me.

Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.

If you’re not ready for everything, you’re not ready for anything.

The Youth of a Nation are the trustees of posterity.

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.

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.

A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

A calling is you feel – you look out and see the need – maybe it’s the need for the poor, to help poor people. Maybe it’s the need to get involved in the race problem, as Martin Luther King was – felt called.

The army is the true nobility of our country.

I feel that God wants me to coach; otherwise, he wouldn’t have put the desire in me.

Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.

How you go about testing is just very different to just being in the situation of qualifying, having to go out, having to nail the lap.

When we see persons of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see persons of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.

Asking is the beginning of receiving. Make sure you don’t go to the ocean with a teaspoon. At least take a bucket so the kids won’t laugh at you.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.

Working with our military community has been the biggest honor of my life.

The nuclear industry has this amazing record, even equipment from generations one and two. But nuclear mishaps tend to come in these big events – Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and now Fukushima – so it’s more visible.

I think every age lives in a blend of technology so there’s always older ones mixed in with newer ones, and when the new technology goes down, the immediate fallback position is either that technology just before that or one several technologies back.

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.

Why should I care about posterity? What’s posterity ever done for me?

What pity is it That we can die, but once to serve our country.

You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.

Some people wonder all their lives if they’ve made a difference. The Marines don’t have that problem.

It’s not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren’t doing.

My preparation is about precision. It is a science.

The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

Biographies, as generally written, are not only misleading but false… In most instances, they commemorate a lie and cheat posterity out of the truth.

To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

My father wasn’t a cruel man. And I loved him. But he was a pretty tough character. His own father was even tougher – one of those Victorians, hard as iron – but my dad was tough enough.

I don’t know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

Get off your butt and join the Marines!

I haven’t written my own epitaph, and I’m not sure I should. Whatever it is, I hope it will be simple, and that it will point people not to me, but to the One I served.

Corruption is a cancer: a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs.

Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.

God spoke to me and called me to His Service. What form this service was to take the voice did not say.

The gods‘ service is tolerable, man’s intolerable.

For many, Christmas is also a time for coming together. But for others, service will come first.