“One reason why we fail to hear God speak is that we are not attentive. We suffer from what might be called ‘spiritual mindlessness.’”

I’m more concerned about who you’re becoming than what you’re doing.

Peace does not lie in getting God to give me other circumstances. Peace lies in finding God in these circumstances.

The miracle of Sunday is that a dead man lives. The miracle of Saturday is that the eternal Son of God lies dead.

If I have the courage to acknowledge my limits and embrace them, I can experience enormous freedom. If I lack this courage, I will be imprisoned by them.

Gratitude is the ability to experience life as a gift. It liberates us from the prison of self-preoccupation.

One of the most painful aspects of suffering is the loneliness of it. Others may offer support or empathy, but no one can walk the road to Moriah in our place.

God is so immense that if he were ‘too visible,’ people would give forced compliance without expressing their heart. So God made it possible, in enormous love, for us to live as if he were not there.

The ministry of bearing with one another is learning to hear God speak through difficult people.

Our beliefs are not just estimates of probabilities. They are also the instruments that guide our actions.

Both hope and pessimism are deeply contagious. And no one is more infectious than a leader.

We who preach have one tool. We are people of the book.

The problem with spending your life climbing up the ladder is that you will go right past Jesus, for he’s coming down.

What matters is not the accomplishments you achieve; what matters is the person you become.

Failure is not an event, but rather a judgment about an event. Failure is not something that happens to us or a label we attach to things. It is a way we think about outcomes.

Art is built on the deepest themes of human meaning: good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death, love and hate. No other story has incarnated those themes more than the story of Jesus.

Every human being who has ever lived has suffered from a messiah complex-except one.

To our generation Einstein has been made to become a double symbol – a symbol of the mind travelling in the cold regions of space, and a symbol of the brave and generous outcast, pure in heart and cheerful of spirit.

With all the travel we’re doing to cold-weather cities, your mind definitely starts to wander. It gets you away from the game. Even when you arrive in a city, you’re tempted to just sit in your hotel and rest. Sometimes it’s nice to just get out and walk around, to see what’s there.

The unfed mind devours itself.

I grew up with the mindset that when you get home from work, you go to dinner and watch a movie. I don’t want to be going to a club and taking off my panties.

The pains of childbirth were altogether different from the enveloping effects of other kinds of pain. These were pains one could follow with one’s mind.

The way in which each human infant is transformed into the finished adult, into the complicated individual version of his city and his century is one of the most fascinating studies open to the curious minded.

To see is one thing; to picture or visualise is another. A person can see things, only when his eyes are open, and when his surroundings are illuminated; but he can have pictures in his mind’s eye, when his eyes are shut and when the world is dark.

I am told the Cheney-Bush team dislikes their junta being compared to the Nazis. If they ceased behaving like Nazis, no comparison would come to mind.