The purpose of leadership is not to make the present bearable. The purpose of leadership is to make the future possible.

Darkness deserves gratitude. It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.

Beware the religion that turns you against another one. It's unlikely that it's really religion at all.

Hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside of us to get better. It is about getting better inside about what is going on outside.

We talk religion in a world that worships the bread but does not distribute it, that practices ritual rather than righteousness, that confesses but does not repent.

Grief is a sign that we loved something more than ourselves. . . . Grief makes us worthy to suffer with the rest of the world.

Compassion makes no distinction between friends and enemies, neighbors and outsiders, compatriots and foreigners. Compassion is the gate to human community.

When souls really touch, it is forever. Then space and time disappear, and all that remains is the consciousness that we are not alone in life.

Compassion is not sympathy. Compassion is mercy. It is a commitment to take responsibility for the suffering of others.

Oppressors do not get to be oppressors in a single sweep. They manage it because little by little, we make them that. We overlook too much in the beginning and wonder why we lost control in the end.

Compassion is the ability to understand how difficult it is for people to be the best of what they want to be at all times.

The Bible says that to have a friend we must show ourselves friendly. To that, I say, “Amen.

This marketplace where people can buy insurance who don't have it today, a competitive marketplace - that's an idea that both sides embrace.

Any day above ground is a good one.

Im a pretty good judge of character.

True country music is honesty, sincerity, and real life to the hilt.

Open your hearts as wide as ever you will, the Spirit of the Lord shall fill them.

I'm finding a lot of actors my age now who are a bit more like me, and not as posh or brought up in a certain way. There's now people of all sorts of kinds of backgrounds.

I see an issue I like, and I support it.

I'm not a political comedian. That's just not what I do.

It is certain, I think, that the best government is the one that governs the least. But there is a much-neglected corollary: the best citizen is the one who least needs governing.