“Courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible.”

People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage.

Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image, and to demonstrate that they, too, are significant.

Violence arises not out of superfluity of power but out of powerlessness.

Real freedom is the ability to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, choose.

Suffering is nature’s way of indicating a mistaken attitude or way of behavior, and to the nonegocentric person every moment of suffering is the opportunity for growth. People should rejoice in suffering, strange as it sounds, for this is a sign of the availability of energy to transform their characters.

Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.

We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one’s total orientation to life.

This is what makes heroism so important: it reflects our own sense of identity and from this our own heroism is molded.

The essence of being human is that, in the brief moment we exist on this spinning planet, we can love some persons and some things, in spite of the fact that time and death will ultimately claim us all.

Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing.

A person can meet anxiety to the extent that his values are stronger than the threat.

Mass communication–wonder as it may be technologically and something to be appreciated and valued–presents us wit a serious daner, the danger of conformism, due to the fact that we all view the same things at the same time in all the cities of the country. (p. 73)

When you are completely absorbed or caught up in something, you become oblivious to things around you, or to the passage of time. It is this absorption in what you are doing that frees your unconscious and releases your creative imagination.

Creativity is the encounter of the intensively conscious human being with his world.

It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.

One does not become fully human painlessly.

Why hast thou made me born in this country, The inhabitant of which is satisfied with being a slave?

Nature is but an image of wisdom, the last thing of the soul; nature being a thing which doth only do, but not know.

As a roadie for the Jimi Hendrix Experience, I learned that I should give up being a guitar player.

Being older now, grown, I’m like, ‘What do we really do that’s fun?’ I’m kind of corny when you think about it. What could I rhyme about? Let me see, um, I gotta pay the rent today.

I am not a politician and I have no intention of being one.

I wouldn’t think I would coach again, because it would just be hard not being in the Cowboys’ blue.

It’s not that I take pride in being unfashionable. It’s just that I’ve gotten used to it.

To be Catholic is the only way of being fully and utterly Christian.