John Quotes

Courage and fear were one thing too.

Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans

People are never able to outperform their self-image.

If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.

Success is due to our stretching to the challenges of life. Failure comes when we shrink from them.

As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I should try to change is me.

Sure, it was your idea and your fly, but he caught the big fish. Remember, fairness is a human idea largely unknown in nature.

As far as I can tell, there are two basic (kissing) rules: 1. Don't bite anything without permission. 2. The human tongue is like wasabi: it's very powerful, and should be used sparingly.

When you draw something it lives and when you photograph it it dies

When you perceive a truth, look for the balancing truth.

If we are serious about loving God, we must begin with people, all people. And especially we must learn to love those that the world generally discards.

Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross Domestic Product. attr to Buthan's King Jigme Singye Wangchuck

A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy

Like many people, I feel like celebrating. Remember this feeling. It is human, and can help us understand when others express bloodlust.

I shall drink to the Pope, if you please, still, to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.

Shouldn't we also ask ourselves what the consequences are of scrambling to provide the "most" of everything to our children in a world of fast dwindling resources?

In a school community, someone who reads a book for some secretive purpose, other than discussing it, is strange. What was she reading for?

Fear is not a sin in the taiga, but cow­ardice is [..].

Aren't maids the ultimate art critics?

The camera would miss it all. A magnificent picture is never worth a thousand perfect words. Ansel Adams can be a great artist, but he can never be Shakespeare. His tools are too literal.

Film is, to me, just unimportant. But people are very important.

Only the road and the dawn, the sun, the wind, and the rain, And the watch fire under stars, and sleep, and the road again.

Declare it. Just the same way we declare war. That is how we will have peace... we just need to declare it.

I will play out the string. I will not betray your trust. I will find you.

Margo always loved mysteries. And in everything that came afterward, I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one.

How flat all sounds are at the seaside, flat and yet emphatic, like the sound of gunshots heard at a distance.

Jesus, I'm not going to be one of those people who sits around talking about what they're going to do. I'm just going to do it.

I recall hearing one of my professors in seminary say that one of the best tests of a person's theology was the effect it has on one's prayers.

If what we learn is no more than what we expect to learn, then we have learned nothing at all.

I thought maybe a day was coming when I'd stop constantly worrying about how to live. Maybe at some point I'd just start living, no questions asked.

Loneliness is the prison of the human spirit. When we are lonely, we pace back and forth in small, shut-in worlds.

The greatest bloodbaths in the history of the human race were recorded in the twentieth century in countries that sought to eliminate God, worship, and faith.

So we gave up. I'd finally had enough of chasing after a ghost who did not want to be seen. We'd failed, maybe, but some mysteries aren't meant to be solved.

If privacy had a gravestone it might read: 'Don't Worry. This Was for Your Own Good.

I have been to the speed of God, sir...and I discommend it.

Humans had spent thousands of years climbing out of caves and building technology so they could reach the moon and live in caves again.

It's good to keep changing your mind. It shows you're thinking. I'll only stop changing my mind when I'm dead. And maybe not even then.

It's because even a good man can't always be right, that we need ... rules.

Give a man a car of his own and he leaves humility and common sense behind him in the garage.

It must be, I thought, one of the race's most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that "it can't happen here" -- that one's own time and place is beyond cataclysm.

A lot of people see doubt as legitimate philosophical posture. They think of themselves in the middle, whereas of course really, they're nowhere.

I just want you to be happy. If that’s with me or with someone else or with nobody. I just want you to be happy.

America is the first culture in jeopardy of amusing itself to death.

The world was getting dangerously crowded with crazy people.

Public speaking professionals say that you win or lose the battle to hold your audience in the first 30 seconds of a given presentation.

The most central truth to the creation account is that this world is a place for God's presence.

Progress without the reasoned freedom to think and act is regression to slavery.

To this day I don’t know if he was struggling with the moral implications of gunning down half a dozen civilians, or if he was mentally counting to see if he had that many shells left in the gun.

A short story is a writer's way of thinking through experience... Journalism aims at accuracy, but fiction's aim is truth. The writer distorts reality in the interest of a larger truth.

Fancy cutting down all those beautiful trees...to make pulp for those bloody newspapers, and calling it civilisation. - Winston Churchill, remarking to his son during a visit to Canada in 1929