“The only way to be true to our American tradition is to maintain absolute governmental neutrality regarding religious beliefs and practices”

Leadership is not something that is done to people, like fixing your teeth. Leadership is unlocking people’s potential to become better.

Give to another human being without the expectation of a return.

Trying to take money out of politics is like trying to take jumping out of basketball.

I might lose because I wasn’t tall enough; I might lose because I wasn’t fast enough. But I wasn’t going to lose because I wasn’t ready.

Imagination allows us to escape the predictable. It enables us to reply to the common wisdom that we cannot soar by saying, ‘Just watch!’

A lot of people want to change the world, but only a few people want to change themselves. When it comes to the issue of race in America, we have to do both.

When you’re not practicing, someone somewhere is. And when the two of you meet, assuming roughly equal ability, the other person will win.

Tax (reform) is ultimately a decision about values.

Sports is a metaphor for overcoming obstacles and achieving against great odds. Athletes, in times of difficulty, can be important role models.

Every time I have some moment on a seashore, or in the mountains, or sometimes in a quiet forest, I think this is why the environment has to be preserved.

Basketball can serve as a kind of metaphor for ultimate cooperation. It is a sport where success, as symbolized by the championship, requires that the dictates of community prevail over selfish impulses.

Working with the UN’s diplomacy and development arms, we can prevent minor differences from escalating into wars.

When you make speeches you elicit expectations against which you will be held accountable.

There has never been a great athlete who died not knowing what pain is.

When conflicts do break out, UN peacekeepers should play a role in defusing and settling them. Without giving up our sovereignty, we can help the UN with better training and better command and control in order to develop more effective peacekeeping forces.

Leaders should be collaborative, modest, and generous

How do I know the Bible isn’t the word of God? Well if it was the word of God it would be clear and easy to understand…considering God was the creator of LANGUAGE!

If God is a crutch, then atheism is a coma.

If I thought the Jews killed God, I’d worship the Jews.

Perhaps God chose me to be an atheist?

There are a lot of very brilliant scholars who believe the reason we have incomplete science on evolution is that there is a higher power involved in this.

Atheism is the opium of the mathematicians. Atheism is the religion of Mathematics.

Nothing enlarges the gulf of atheism more than the wide passage that lies between the faith and lives of men pretending to teach Christianity.

In August, 1900, [Friedrich] Nietzsche was laid to rest Nietzsche, as the apostle of atheism, heralded the darkest century the world has ever known.