Do you think things always have an explanation?  Yes I do.  But I think that with our human limitations we're not always able to understand the explanations.  But you see, Meg, just because we don't underestand doesn't mean the explanation doesn't exist.

You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore

Astronomy, as nothing else can do, teaches men humility.

In the beginning, God created heaven and earth...The extraordinary, the marvelousthing about Genesis is not how unscientific it is, but how accurate it is.  How could the ancient Israelites have known the exact order of an evolution that wasn't formulated for thousands of years?  Here is a truth that cuts across barriers of time and space.

Madeleine L'Engle in her Newberry Medal award acceptance speech

The dominance of conclusions over arguments is most pronounced where emotions are involved.  The psychologist Paul Slovic has proposed an affect heuristic in which people let their likes and dislikes determine their beliefs about the world.  Your political preference determines the arguments you find compelling.

In all of life, there are  sequential steps of growth and development.  Each step is important and each one takes time.  No step can be skipped.

Motivation is much less about external prodding or stimulation, and much more about what is inside of you and inside your work.

...it is much easier, as well as far more enjoyable to identify and lable mistakes of others that to recognize our own.

If you can't believe - if you can't accept anything by faith - you are doomed to a life dominated by doubt.

Reality is in no way obligated to mimic formal systems of symbol manipulation devised by humans.

Can we count on conventional science always choosing the incorrect alternative between two possibilities?  I would vote yes, because the important problems usually require a change in paradigm, which is forbidden to conventional science.

You can fool yourself if you want, and you can fool as many as will follow for as long as you can get away with it.  But you can't fool reality.  If your design is wrong, the plane won't fly.

There is enough virtue in human nature to make republican government possible, but there is also much depravity so that it is not certain.

Yes, she would trust.  The universe is a uni-verse.  Everything is connected by the love of the Creator.

Do not pray for tasks equal to your abilities, but pray for abilities equal to your tasks.  Then the performance of your tasks will be no miracle, but you will be the miracle.

I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

You cannot make men good by law; and without good men you cannot have a good society.

Why are unintended consequences common?  People like to take knee jerk reactions - they like to do what sounds good or is politically correct rather than taking the time and effort to do the proper analysis and look at the data before taking action

The statement that there is any such thing, and the statement that there is no such thing, are neither of them statements that science can make.  And real scientists do not make them.  It is usually the journalists and popular novelists who have picked up a few odds and ends of half-baked science from textbooks who go in for  them.

No outside copying of our organization and no application of blind obedience could duplicate the record of this church or the performance of its members.  Our willingness to sacrifice and our skills in cooperative efforts come from our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, from the inspired teachings of our leaders, and from the commitments and covenants we knowingly make.

...the number of prayers we say may contribute to our happiness, but the number of prayers se answer may be of even greater importance.

Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others can not keep it from themselves.

...an equally baffling problem, which has never received the attention it deserves, is who is to make wise those who are required to have wisdom?

The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare.

Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.

Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.

Recognize that if you have feelings that you are not loved by your Father in Heaven, you are being manipulated by Satan.

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.  Art is knowing which ones to keep.

That the eye with all its inimitable contrivances...could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest sense.

I testify that He was raised in a lowly town and thank Him for the example of rising above his beginnings without renouncing them...

A man might have plenty of help finding the short path to hell, but no one else can make him set foot upon it.

Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge; and if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered.

Daily hope is vital, since the 'Winter Quarters' of our lives are not immediately adjacent to our promised land...An arduous trek still awaits, but hope spurs weary disciples on.  Those with true hope often see their personal circumstances shaken, like kaleidoscopes, again and again.  Yet with the 'eye of faith', they still see divine pattern and purpose.

If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the People, they will never be enslaved.  This will be their great security.

It calls me back to times when, beset with difficulties and dangers, we were fellow laborers in the same cause, struggling for what is most valuable to man, his right of self government.  Laboring always at the same oar, with some wave ever ahead threatening to overwhelm us and yet passing harmless under our bark, we knew not how, we rode through the storm with heart and hand, and made a happy port...and so we have gone on, and so we shall go on, puzzled and prospering beyond example in the history of man.

I never loved or admired America so much as since I left it...we seldom estimate blessings justly till we are about to lose them for a time, or altogether.

But what do the foolish printers of America mean by retailing all this stuff in our papers?  As if it was not enough to be slandered by one's enemies without circulating the slanders among his friends also.

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of those that matter least.

There are numbers that perhaps fear less the being in Hell, than out of fashion.

We are always equal to what we undertake with resolution.  It is a part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate, to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance.

It is wonderful how much may be done if we are constantly doing.

The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head.

We may look up to armies for our defence, but Virtue is our best security.

There is no summit of virtue, and no depth of vice which Human Nature is not capable of rising to, on the one hand, or sinking to on the other.

...passion never fails to wrest the sceptre from reason.

Oh, Adams sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good.

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders.  But they have never failed to imitate them.

Be smart and be happy, or be stupid and be miserable!

Perceiving and thinking are not the same.  Perceiving means recognizing phenomena by means of out five senses.  Thinking on the other hand, is our mental ability to pursue causes and purposes by objectively asking "why" about all phenomena.

Nothing is sometimes the right thing to say.

The greatest battle of life is fought out within the silent chambers of the soul.  A victory on the inside of a man's heart is worth a hundred conquests on the battlefields of life.

There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality.  And then there are those who turn one into the other.

He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.

Endure and preserve yourselves for the happy times ahead.