Find A Quote by Topic

To find a quote about a particular topic, please click on the appropriate letter below.  For example, if you’re looking for a quote about “worry,” click on the “w.”

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

IDEAS
“Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea.”
– Emile Chartier Alain

“Great ideas need landing gear as well as wings.”
– C.O. Jackson

“Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.”
– Admiral Hyman Rickover

“New ideas can be good or bad, just the same as old ones.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt

“It is not men that interest or disturb me primarily; it is ideas. Ideas live; men die.”
– Woodrow Wilson

“One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.”
– Walter Bagehot

“Money never starts an idea; it is the idea that starts the money.”
– William J. Cameron

“The ideas I stand for are not mine.  I borrowed them from Socrates.  I swiped them from Chesterfield.  I stole them from Jesus.  And I put them in a book.  If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?”
– Dale Carnegie

“Nothing is so corrupting as a great idea whose time is past.”
– John P. Girer

“Getting an idea should be like sitting down on a pin; it should make you jump up and do something.”
– E.L. Simpson

“The power of an idea can be measured by the degree of resistance it attracts.”
– David Yoho

“Even the best ideas will rarely work unless you do. Many brilliant ideas have washed out simply because there just wasn’t enough elbow grease and legwork put behind them.”
– Milton Rockmore

“No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.”
– Victor Hugo

“Great minds discuss ideas.
Average minds discuss events.
Small minds discuss people.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt

“Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don’t let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?”
– Joseph Stalin

IDEALS
“Ideals are like the stars – we never reach them but like mariners on the sea, we chart our course by them.”
– Charles Schurz

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
– G.K. Chesterton

IDEALISM VS. REALISM
“Longing for the ideal while criticizing the real is evidence of immaturity. On the other hand, settling for the real without striving for the ideal is complacency. Maturity is living with the tension.”
– Rick Warren

IDENTIFICATION
“Christ identified with us. He united Himself to us, bearing our sin, so we could partake of His righteousness. Identification becomes real to me when I recognize my union with Christ. Identification becomes real through me when others see the fruit of my union with Christ.”
– Tony Cooke

Identification: He is now in us, and we are now in Him. He experienced our humanity and took the full brunt of punishment for our sin, so that we could partake fully of the benefits of His righteousness.
– Tony Cooke

“It is sweet to remember that the exaltation of Christ in heaven is a representative exaltation. He is exalted at the Father’s right hand, and though as Jehovah He had eminent glories, in which finite creatures cannot share, yet as the Mediator, the honours which Jesus wears in heaven are the heritage of all the saints. It is delightful to reflect how close is Christ’s union with His people. We are actually one with Him; we are members of His body; and His exaltation is our exaltation.”
– Charles Spurgeon

IDENTITY
“Whose I am defines who I am.”
– Tony Cooke

“It is the normal state of the human heart to try to build its identity around something besides God.”
– Soren Kierkegaard

“When I left the house of bondage I left everything behind. I wanted to keep nothing of Egypt on me, and so I went to the Lord and asked him to give me a new name.”
– Sojourner Truth

“Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.”
– Judy Garland

“Moses spent forty years thinking he was somebody; forty years learning he was nobody; and forty years discovering what God can do with a nobody.”
– D.L. Moody

IDLENESS
“I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely.”
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

“Idleness warps the mind. Thinking without constructive action becomes a disease.”
– Henry Ford

IDOLATRY
“Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.”
– Martin Luther

“Anything you look to more than Christ for a sense of acceptability, joy, significance, hope, and security is by definition your ‘god,’ something you adore and serve with your whole life and heart.”
– Tim Keller

IGNORANCE
“Today, on our own turf, we face pagan ignorance about God every bit as deep as that which the early church faced in the Roman Empire.”
– J.I. Packer

“Men blaspheme what they do not know.”
– Blaise Pascal

IMAGINATION
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
– Albert Einstein

“Live out of your imagination, not your history.”
– Stephen R. Covey

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
– Albert Einstein

IMITATION
“One of the commonest causes of failure in Christian life is found in the attempt to follow some good man whom we greatly admire. No man and no woman, no matter how good, can be safely followed. If we follow any man or woman, we are bound to go astray. There has been but one absolutely perfect Man on this earth–the Man Christ Jesus. If we try to follow any other man we are surer to imitate his faults than his excellencies. Look to Jesus and Jesus only as your Guide.”
– R.A. Torrey

“Never take others for your example in the tasks you have to perform, however holy they may be, for the devil will set their imperfections before you. But imitate Christ, who is supremely perfect and supremely holy, and you will never err.
– St. John of the Cross

IMPACT
“I pray that when I die, all of hell will rejoice that I am no longer in the fight.”
– C. T. Studd

IMPARTATION
“Sometimes we just really need a download from Heaven to upgrade our operating system.”
– Tony Cooke

IMPOSSIBILITIES
“We forget that ‘impossible’ is one of God’s favorite words”
– Max Lucado

“Only he who can see the invisible can do the impossible.”
– Frank L. Gaines

“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.”
– Walt Disney

“Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.”
– Louis D. Brandeis

IMPROVEMENT
“There’s a better way to do it. Find it!”
– Thomas A Edison

INCARNATION
“If God never became flesh, like us, he could neither redeem us nor reveal to us his promise of eternal life. It is only by becoming like us that God can make us like him, restoring us in his image.”
– Irenaeus of Lyon

“Rejoice that the immortal God is born that mortal men may live in eternity.”
– Jan Hus

“Hail, great Immanuel, all divine! In thee thy Father’s glories shine.”
– Isaac Watts

“Christ, by highest heaven adored; Christ, the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold Him come, Offspring of the Virgin’s womb:
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus, our Emmanuel.”
– Charles Wesley (2nd verse of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”)

“Emmanuel. God with us. He who resided in Heaven, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and the Spirit, willingly descended into our world. He breathed our air, felt our pain, knew our sorrows, and died for our sins. He didn’t come to frighten us, but to show us the way to warmth and safety.”
– Charles Swindoll 

“The omnipotent, in one instant, made himself breakable. He who had been spirit became piercable. He who was larger than the universe became an embryo.”
— Max Lucado 

“The name Emmanuel takes in the whole mystery. Jesus is ‘God with us.’ He had a nature like our own in all things, sin only excepted. But though Jesus was ‘with us’ in human flesh and blood, He was at the same time very God.”
– J. C. Ryle

“The Son of God did not want to be seen and found in heaven. Therefore he descended from heaven into this humility and came to us in our flesh, laid himself into the womb of his mother and into the manger and went on to the cross. This was the ladder that he placed on earth so that we might ascend to God on it. This is the way you must take.”
— Martin Luther 

“For, first, the birth of Christ was the incarnation of God: it was God taking upon himself human—a mystery, a wondrous mystery, to be believed in rather than to be defined.”
— Charles H. Spurgeon 

“What we celebrate at Christmas is not so much the birth of a baby, but the incarnation of God Himself.”
— R. C. Sproul 

“Jesus was God spelling himself out in language humanity could understand.”
– S. D. Gordon 

“Because in no other person but the historic Jesus of Nazareth has God become man and lived a human life on earth, died to bear the penalty of our sins, and been raised from death and exalted to glory, there is no other Savior, for there is no other person who is qualified to save.”
– John Stott

“Non-Christians seem to think that the Incarnation implies some particular merit or excellence in humanity. But of course, it implies just the reverse: a particular demerit and depravity. No creature that deserved Redemption would need to be redeemed. They that are whole need not the physician. Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.”
– C. S. Lewis 

“Christ is the central fact in the world’s history. To him everything looks forward or backward. All the lines of history converge upon him. All the great purposes of God culminate in him. The greatest and most momentous fact which the history of the world records is the fact of his birth.”
– Charles Spurgeon

“The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation.”
– J. I. Packer

“In the mystery of the Incarnation God increases what is ours, without diminishing what is His.”
– Gregory the Great

“That is why Christ took on our humanity, except for sin, that he should not terrify us but rather that with love and favor he should console and confirm.”
– Martin Luther

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INCREASE
True productivity, growth, and increase can occur ultimately even when there is an appearance of loss initially. Jesus states, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain” (John 12:24).
– Tony Cooke

INDISPENSABILITY
“Graveyards are full of indispensable men.”
– Charles de Gaulle

INDIVIDUAL EFFORT
“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, I should do and, with the help of God, I will do.”
– Edward Everett Hale

INDIVIDUALITY
“Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.”
– Malcolm Muggeridge

INEXPERIENCE
“The arrogance of the young is a direct result of not having known enough consequences. The turkey that every day greedily approaches the farmer who tosses him grain is not wrong. It is just that no one ever told him about Thanksgiving.”
– Harry Golden

INFERIORITY
“No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.”
– Elanor Roosevelt

INFORMATION
“As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.”
– Benjamin Disraeli

INFLUENCE
“When I think of those who have influenced my life the most, I think not of the great but of the good.”
– John Knox 

“The people who influence you are people who believe in you.”
– Henry Drummond

“You cannot antagonize and influence at the same time.”
– John Knox

“If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at it.”
– Thomas Fuller

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
– Mark Twain

“If we work upon marble, it will perish; if on brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds and imbue them with principles, with the just fear of God and love of our fellow men, we engrave on the tablets something that will brighten to all eternity.”
– Daniel Webster

“We are the salt of the earth, mind you, not the sugar, and our ministry is truly to cleanse and not just to change the taste.”
– Vance Havner

“The greatest good you can do for others is not just to show your riches but to reveal to them their own.”
– Benjamin Disraeli

“If you live with a lame man, you learn to limp.”
– Plutarch

“A life isn’t significant except for its impact on other lives.” –
– Jackie Robinson

“The important thing to remember is that if you don’t have that inspired enthusiasm that is contagious — whatever you do have is also contagious.”
– Danny Cox

“Every great institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man.”
– Thomas Alva Edison

“It is wisdom to use your influence. It is criminal to sell it.”
– Ed Cole

INITIATIVE
“If you travel the earth, you will find it is largely divided into two classes of people—people who say ‘I wonder why such and such is not done” and people who say “Now who is going to prevent me from doing that thing?’”
– Winston Churchill

“Parties who want milk should not seat themselves on a stool in the middle of the field and hope that the cow will back up to them.”
– Albert Hubert

“Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.”
– Dwight David Eisenhower

“The difference between getting somewhere and nowhere is the courage to make an early start. The fellow who sits still and does just what he is told will never be told to do big things.”
– Charles M. Schwab

INQUIRY
“He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.”
– Chinese Proverb

INSANITY
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
– Albert Einstein

INSPIRATION
“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.”
– Chuck Close (Painter)

INTEGRITY
“None have I corrupted, none have I defrauded; merchandise have I not made.”
– John Knox 

“I am convinced what this world wants is true men and women, not great men, but true and honest and upright persons that God can use…”
– D.L. Moody 

“’God is love’ means that He tries constantly to block your route to destruction.”
– Billy Graham

“I would rather be right than President.”
– Henry Clay (When advised that his abolitionist position would cost him the election)

“Do the right thing not the comfortable thing.”
– James Harvey

Charles Spurgeon speaks of “the man who preached so well and lived so badly, that when he was in the pulpit everybody said he ought never to come out again, and when he was out of it they all declared he never ought to enter it again… We do not trust those persons who have two faces, nor will men believe in those whose verbal and practical testimonies are contradictory. As actions, according to the proverb, speak louder than words, so an ill life will effectually drown the voice of the most eloquent ministry.”

“Serve God with integrity, and if you achieve no success, at least no sin will lie upon your conscience.”
– Spurgeon

“I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating.”
– Sophocles

“Not only did Judas sell Jesus for thirty pieces of silver; he also sold himself.”
– George H. Morrison

“If you take care of yourself and walk with integrity, you may be confident that God will deal with those who sin against you. Above all, don’t give birth to sin yourself; rather, pray for those who persecute you. God will one day turn your persecution into praise.”
– Warren Wiersbe

“The God who speaks with utmost integrity must have messengers who represent him well.”
– Haddon W. Robinson

“I am more afraid of doing what is wrong than of dying.”
– Philip Doddridge

“Integrity begins with a person being willing to be honest with himself.”
– Cort R. Flint

“Integrity means that if our private life were suddenly exposed, we’d have no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed. Integrity means that our outward life is consistent with our inner convictions.”
– Billy Graham

“Integrity is the integration of one’s life around his core values.”
– William D. Lawrence

“Few men have virtue enough to withstand the highest bidder.”
– George Washington

“I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.”
– George Washington

“Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly.”
– Thomas Jefferson

“The time is always right to do what is right.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.

“In looking for people to hire, look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence and energy. And if they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.”
– Warren Buffet

“Integrity is not a 90 percent thing, not a 95 percent thing; either you have it or you don’t.”
– Peter Scotese

“Keep true, never be ashamed of doing right; decide on what you think is right, and stick to it.”
– George Eliot

“He errs, as other men do, but he errs with integrity.”
– Benjamin Franklin (speaking of George Washington)

“Image is what people think we are. Integrity is what we really are.”
– John Maxwell

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what I light I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“Integrity is one of several paths. It distinguishes itself from the others because it is the right path, and the only one upon which you will never get lost.”
– M.H. McKee

“Nothing can be truly great which is not right.”
– Samuel Johnson

“A great business is seldom if ever built up, except on the lines of strictest integrity.”
– Andrew Carnegie

“He is most cheated who cheats himself.”
– Leonard Drozd

To see that my adversary gives me my rights is natural; but…from our Lord’s standpoint it does not matter if I am defrauded or not; what does matter is that I do not defraud.
– Oswald Chambers

INTELLECT
“We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
– Albert Einstein

INTELLECTUALISM
“An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.”
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

INTELLIGENCE
“Anyone who endeavors to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened. You are embarking on something that is going to take the whole of you, brains and all.”
– C.S. Lewis

INTENTIONALITY
“When life becomes accidental, you must become intentional.”
– Gerald Brooks

INTENTIONS
“An evil action cannot be justified by reference to a good intention.”
– Thomas Aquinas

INTERCESSION
“If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet the distance makes no difference; He is praying for me.”
– Robert Murray McCheyne

INTERPRETATION
“The general rule of interpreting Scripture is this: the literal sense of every text is to be taken, if it be not contrary to some other texts. But in that case, the obscure text is to be interpreted by those which speak more plainly.”
– John Wesley

INVITATION
“My job is simply to proclaim the Gospel, and to let the Spirit of God apply in the individual hearts.  When I give the invitation for people to receive Christ it will be so quiet you can hear a pin drop.  And you will see people coming forward deliberately, quietly, reverently, thoughtfully, and many of their lives. . . . will have been transformed and changed in that moment.”
– Billy Graham

INVOLVEMENT
“The best fertilizer is the owner’s footprint.”
– South Carolina Saying

INWARD MAN
“I’m a thousand times bigger on the inside than I am on the outside.”
– Smith Wigglesworth 

ISOLATION
“Satan watches for those vessels that sail without a convoy.”
– George Swinnock

“According to one statistic, 70% of pastors do not have someone they consider a close friend. Isolation is an invitation to disaster. Some solitude is OK; isolation is not. Every leader needs two types of ‘teams’ in a storm. A personal team provides support personally and spiritually. A technical team provides support with knowledge and expertise.”
– Tony Cooke

“I know of no more potent killer than isolation. There is no more destructive influence on physical and mental health than the isolation of you from me and us from them. It has been shown to be a central agent in the etiology of depression, paranoia, schizophrenia, rape, suicide, murder, and wide variety of disease states.”
– Professor Philip Zimbardo, Stanford University

“The man who lives by himself and for himself is likely to be corrupted by the company he keeps.”
– Charles H. Parkhurst

“In evangelical individualism people think of their personal relationship with God in isolation (‘Just me and Jesus’) and forge their destiny apart from any church authority. While holding relatively low opinions of history, traditions, and the church, they turn to the experiences of self and isolate themselves from their brothers and sisters in the faith. True spirituality is perverted as it becomes a quest for inner stimulation rather than growth in biblical knowledge and the application of truth in community. Healthy Christians do not live in isolation.”
– Michael G. Moriarty

JEALOUSY
“Jealous leaders measure their success by the failure of others.”
– Andy Stanley

JESUS
“How unspeakably wonderful to know that all our concerns are held in hands that bled for us.”
– John Newton

“God has only one ‘man of the hour’ and that is our Lord Jesus Christ.”
– Gordon Lindsay

“He won me over entirely by giving himself entirely to me.”
– Bernard of Clairvaux

“Christ was born in the first century, yet He belongs to all centuries. He was born a Jew, yet He belongs to all races. He was born in Bethlehem, yet He belongs to all countries.”
– George Washington Truett

“I must know Jesus, not as the visionary dreams of him, but as the Word reveals him.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon

“It was love that motivated his self-emptying, that led him to become a little lower than angels, to be subject to parents, to bow his head beneath the Baptist’s hands, to endure the weakness of the flesh, and to submit to death even upon the cross.”
– Bernard of Clairvaux

“Hail, great Immanuel, all divine! In thee thy Father’s glories shine.”
– Isaac Watts

“Jesus Christ walking on the earth is far more important than me walking on the moon.”
– Buzz Aldrin

“Jesus was crucified on the cross so that we could stop crucifying ourselves.”
– Rick Warren

“Paul wrote to the Galatians: ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith in the Son of God’ (Galatians 2: 20). Paul’s faith was as wide and abundant as the energy that flows from Jesus. He had given his whole life to Jesus, and he himself lived no longer. By a continuous and unrestricted faith, he gave Jesus the liberty of energizing his life without ceasing and without limitation.”
– Andrew Murray

“The name of Jesus can still remove distractions from the minds of men, expel demons, and also take away diseases. Furthermore, it produces a marvelous meekness of spirit and a complete change of character.”
– Origen (184-253)

“By a Carpenter mankind was made, and only by that Carpenter can mankind be remade.”
– Desiderius Erasmus

“Christ’s sheep will not be offended by Christ’s voice.”
– Charles Spurgeon

Before the throne of God above I have a strong and perfect plea. A great high Priest whose Name is Love Who ever lives and pleads for me.
– Charitie L. Bancroft

“Apart from Him, let nothing dazzle you.”
– Ignatius

“Jesus was born of a virgin, suffered under Pontius Pilate, died on the cross and rose from the dead to make worshipers out of rebels!”
– A.W. Tozer

“Jesus is the thread that holds all Scripture together. He is the prism that breaks forth its multifaceted colors. He is the lens that puts all of it in focus, the switch that sheds light on its dimly lit quarters, and the key that unlocks its meaning and riches.”
– Leonard Sweet

“Christ is the humility of God embodied in human nature; the Eternal Love humbling itself, clothing itself in the garb of meekness and gentleness, to win and serve and save us.”
– Andrew Murray

“In my deepest woundedness I saw your glory, and it dazzled me.”
– Augustine

“You will never know the fullness of Christ until you know the emptiness of everything but Christ.”
– Charles Spurgeon

“Jesus is Lord, not just a ‘Life Coach.’ The difference is enormous. Scripture does not exist to facilitate our success (as we define it), but to convey God’s salvation toward every aspect of our lives. The plan of God is not merely about us fulfilling our individual destinies, but about us fulfilling his will, for his glory and honor. Jesus is to reign supreme and sovereign in our lives; He is not just a means toward our fulfillment and happiness. He is the Alpha and the Omega.”
– Tony Cooke

“Make Christ magnificent in the eyes of man.”
– Henrietta Mears

“Grieve not the Christ of God, who redeems us; and remember that we grieve Him most when we will not let Him pour His love upon us.”
– Alexander MacLaren

“The deity of Christ is the key doctrine of the scriptures. Reject it, and the Bible becomes a jumble of words without any unifying theme. Accept it, and the Bible becomes an intelligible and ordered revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ.”
– J. Oswald Sanders

“Jesus did not come to reinforce how low we were. He came to bring us to new heights.”
– Tony Cooke

“Jesus was not just godly, godlike, God-hungry, God- focused, or God- worshiping. He was God.”
– Max Lucado

“Where Christ is, there he always goes against the flow.”
– Martin Luther

“Our Easter faith is that we really do encounter Jesus himself; not a message from him, or a doctrine inspired by him, or an ethics of love, or a new idea of human destiny, or a picture of him, but Jesus himself.”
– Herbert McCabe

“The Example—He faced every temptation and overcame.
The Substitute—He bore all iniquity and every shame.
Through death, the Sinless One was swallowed in the earth.
Risen, victorious, He gives each of us new birth.”
– Tony Cooke

“The most significant achievement of our age is not that man stood on the moon. But rather that God in Christ Jesus stood on the earth.”
– Jim Irwin (U.S. Astronaut)

“Christ and his benefits go inseparably and undividedly… Many would willingly receive his privileges, who will not receive his person; but it cannot be; if we will have one, we must take the other too: Yea, we must accept his person first, and then his benefits: as it is in the marriage covenant, so it is here.”
– John Flavel

“God became man, that we might be gods.”
– Ireneaus

“Christ is not a reservoir but a spring. His life is continual, active and ever passing on with an outflow as necessary as its inflow. If we do not perpetually draw the fresh supply from the living Fountain, we shall either grow stagnant or empty, It is, therefore, not so much a perpetual fullness as a perpetual filling.”
– A.B. Simpson

Emmanuel. God with us. He who resided in Heaven, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and the Spirit, willingly descended into our world. He breathed our air, felt our pain, knew our sorrows, and died for our sins. He didn’t come to frighten us, but to show us the way to warmth and safety.
– Charles Swindoll

“Learn to know Christ and him crucified. Learn to sing to him, and say, “Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what is mine and given me what is yours. You have become what you were not so that I might become what I was not.”
– Martin Luther

“Jesus was the meeting place of eternity and time, the blending of deity and humanity, the junction of heaven and earth.”
– Oswald Sanders

“Cling, therefore, to Jesus in life and death; trust yourself to the glory of Him who alone can help you when all others fail.”
– Thomas A’ Kempis

“The mystery of the humanity of Christ, that He sunk Himself into our flesh, is beyond all human understanding.”
– Martin Luther

Beautiful verbs in Matthew 2:11 – They entered the house and saw the child with his mother, Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasure chests and gave him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
1. They Entered
2. They Saw
3. They Bowed
4. They Worshiped
5. They Opened (their treasures)
6. They Gave

“I have taken much pains to know everything that is esteemed worth knowing amongst men; but with all my reading, nothing now remains to comfort me at the close of this life but this passage of St. Paul: “It is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.” To this I cleave, and herein do I find rest.”
– John Selden

“It gave me no pleasure to see people drink in my opinions if they seemed ignorant of Jesus Christ and the value of being saved by Him. Sound conviction for sin, especially the sin of unbelief, and a heart set on fire to be saved by Christ, with a strong yearning for a truly sanctified soul—this was what delighted me; those were the souls I considered blessed.”
– John Bunyan

“When we hear that Christ was made a curse for us, let us believe it with joy and assurance. By faith Christ changes places with us. He gets our sins, we get His holiness.”
– Martin Luther (commenting on Galatians 3:13)

“Lord Jesus Christ, you are for me medicine when I am sick;
you are my strength when I need help;
you are life itself when I fear death;
you are the way when I long for heaven;
you are light when all is dark;
you are my food when I need nourishment.”
– Ambrose of Milan (340-397)

“Make Jesus Christ your theme! I have seen preachers espouse causes and champion movements, and when the cause died and the movement collapsed, the preacher vanished too. But the man who glories in Christ never grows stale.”
-Vance Havner

“Christ was either liar, lunatic, or Lord!”
– Thomas Aquinas

“In his life, Christ is an example, showing us how to live; in his death, he is a sacrifice, satisfying our sins; in his resurrection, a conqueror; in his ascension, a king; in his intercession, a high priest.”
– Martin Luther

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said wouldn’t be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with a man who says he is a poached egg – or else he’d be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the son of God, or else a madman or something worse.”
– C.S. Lewis

“Christ is the great central fact in the world’s history. To Him everything looks forward or backward. All the lines of history converge upon Him.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon

“The Son of God became the Son of Man so that sons of men may become sons of God.”
– C.S. Lewis

“The good news is not that Jesus Christ lived and died, but that He died and lives.”
– Our Daily Bread

“When men sought to make Him a king He fled; now that they seek to put Him to death He goes out to meet them.”
– Rudolph Stier

JOB
“We do not believe all that Job’s friends said. They spoke very often as uninspired men, for we find them saying many things that are not true; and if we read the book of Job through, we might say with regard to them, ‘miserable comforters are ye all,’ for they did not speak concerning God’s servant, Job, the thing that was right.”
– Charles Spurgeon

JOY
“If you have no joy, there’s a leak in your Christianity somewhere.”
– Billy Sunday

“In a world that makes you cry you better have some folks who make you laugh. That’s not denial. That’s survival.”
– Beth Moore

“Joy is the serious business of Heaven.”
– C.S. Lewis

“Joy, not grit, is the hallmark of holy obedience. We need to be light-hearted in what we do to avoid taking ourselves too seriously. It is a cheerful revolt against self and pride.”
– Richard J. Foster

“Holy joy will be oil to the wheels of our obedience.”
– Matthew Henry

“God created us so that the joy He has in Himself might be ours. God doesn’t simply think about Himself or talk to Himself. He enjoys Himself! He celebrates with infinite and eternal intensity the beauty of who He is as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And we’ve been created to join the party!”
– Sam Storms

“Real joy comes not from ease or riches or from the praise of others, but from doing something worthwhile.
– Wilfred Grenfell

“Joy is the sheer evidence of God.”
– Pierre Chardin

JUDGEMENT
“Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.”
– Jim Horning

“Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.”
– Will Rogers

“There are always people who are prepared to pervert the words of Christ for their own purposes, and to deny the final judgment in order to persuade themselves and others that they can sin without fear of punishment. Do not even listen to such people, but turn your back on them.”
– Polycarp (69-155 A.D.) Bishop of Smyrna

“Hundreds of passages point to a time of judgment for every person who has ever lived-none will escape. If you took all the references to judgment out of the Bible, you would have little Bible left.”
– Billy Graham

“To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man’s character one must judge it by the standards of his time, not ours.”
– Mark Twain

“What we do not understand we have no right to judge.”
– Henri Frederic Amiel

JUSTICE
“God in his infinite mercy has devised a way by which justice can be satisfied, and yet mercy can be triumphant. Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, took upon himself the form of man, and offered unto Divine Justice that which was accepted as an equivalent for the punishment due to all his people.”
– Charles Spurgeon

KINDNESS
“Nothing so clearly discovers a spiritual man as his treatment of an erring brother.”
– Augustine

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
– Maya Angelou

“When in doubt, be kind to each other.”
– Ken Blanchard

“Frequently we do not leave the past behind. We clasp on to it. We dissect it, and let fears for the future, tempered by the past, unconsciously prevent us from taking up the task eternal.”
– Ray Simpson

“I prefer you to make mistakes in kindness than work miracles in unkindness.”
– Mother Teresa

“If we do not commend the Gospel to people by our holy walk and conversation, we shall not win them to Christ. Some little act of kindness will perhaps do more to influence them than any number of long sermons.”
– D.L. Moody

“Your mission is to evangelize, not to curse. Prove yourself to be an evangelist, not a tyrannical legislator. Men want to be led, not driven.”
– Oecolampadius (Protestant Reformer writing to William Farel)

“You can accomplish by kindness,” wrote Publilius Syrus in the first century B.C., “what you cannot do by force.”

“Say what you mean, mean what you say, but don’t say it mean.”

“Let there be something of benevolence, in all that I speak.”
– Jonathan Edwards

“Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.”
– Blaise Pascal

“The kindest word in all the world is the unkind word, unsaid.”
– Unknown

“Often the only thing a child can remember about an adult in later years, when he or she is grown, is whether or not that person was kind.”
– Billy Graham

“When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people.  Now I admire kind people.”
– Abraham Heschel

“When I was learned, knowledge was everything. Now that I’m a learner, kindness is everything.”
– Leonard Sweet

“Always be a littler kinder than necessary.”
– James M. Barrie

“I expect to pass through life but once. If, therefore, there can be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.”
– William Penn

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”
– Plato

“I care not for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not better off for it.”
– Abraham Lincoln

“Three things in life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind.
– Henry James

“Kindness makes a person attractive. If you would win the world, melt it, do not hammer it.”
– Alexander Maclaren

“More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all the theological arguments in the world.”
– William Barclay

“Men are only great as they are kind.”
– Elbert Hubbard

KNOWING GOD
“I often wonder if my knowledge about God has not become my greatest stumbling block to my knowledge of God.”
– Henri Nouwen

KNOWLEDGE
“There are those who seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge; that is curiosity. There are those who seek knowledge to be known by others; that is vanity. There are those who seek knowledge in order to serve; that is love.”
– Bernard of Clairvaux

“Knowledge may not prevent life’s storms from coming to us; but knowledge acted upon can prevent those same storms from destroying us!”
– Eddie Turner

“If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.”
– Margaret Fuller

“Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing; education is a progressive discovery of your own ignorance.”
– Will Durant

“We don’t know one millionth of one percent of anything.”
– Thomas Edison

“The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.”
– Oscar Wilde

“All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.”
– Johann Goethe

“We don’t know one-millionth of one percent about anything.”
– Thomas Edison

“Of all kinds of knowledge that we can ever obtain, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves are the most important.”
– Jonathan Edwards

“There is no substitute for accurate knowledge. Know yourself, know your business, know your men.”
– Lee Iacocca

LABELS
“Don’t rely too much on labels; Far too often they are fables.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon

LAST WORDS
When the great Christian and scientist, Sir Michael Faraday, was dying, some journalists questioned him as to his speculations about life after death. “Speculations!” he said, “I know nothing about speculations. I’m resting on certainties. ‘I know that my redeemer liveth, and because He lives, I shall live also.'”

Martin Luther said: “Our God is the God from whom cometh salvation: God is the Lord by who escape death.”

John Knox said: Live in Christ, live in Christ, and the flesh need not fear death.

John Wesley said: “The best of all is, God is with us. Farewell! Farewell!”

Charles Wesley said: “I shall be satisfied with thy likeness — satisfied, satisfied!”

Adoniram Judson said: “I am not tired of my work, neither am I tired of the world; yet when Christ calls me home, I shall go with the gladness of a boy bounding away from school.”

John Pawson said: “I know I am dying, but my deathbed is a bed of roses. I have no thorns planted upon my dying pillow. Heaven is already begun!”

When Benjamin Franklin was about to die, he asked that a picture of Christ on the cross should be so placed in his bedroom that he could look, as he said, “upon the form of the Silent Sufferer.” He wrote in advance the epitaph to be on his gravestone: “The body of Benjamin Franklin, Printer, like the cover of an old book, it’s contents torn out and stripped of its lettering and gilding, lies here…Yet the Work itself shall not be lost; for it will, as he believed, appear once more in a new and more beautiful edition, corrected and amended by the Author.”

Before he preached his last sermon, George Whitfield prayed, “Lord Jesus, I am weary in your work—but not of your work.” If I have not yet finished my course, let me go and speak for you once more in the fields, seal your truth, and come home and die.”

During his final sermon (which last two hours), Whitfield said, “I go; I go to a rest prepared: my sun has given light to many—but now it is about to set—no, to rise to the zenith of immortal glory. I have outlived many on earth—but they cannot outlive me in heaven. Many shall outlive me on earth and live when this body is no more—but there—oh, thought divine! I shall be in a world where time, age, sickness, and sorrow are unknown. My body fails—but my spirit expands. How willingly I would live forever to preach Christ. But I do to be with him. How brief—comparatively brief—but has been my life compared to the vast labors which I see before me yet to be accomplished. But if I leave now, while so few care about heavenly things, may the God of peace will surely visit you.”

LAUGHTER
“Humor is a prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer.”
– Reinhold Niebuhr

“Laughter is an instant vacation.”
– Milton Berle

“You don’t stop laughing because you grow old; you grow old because you stop laughing.”
– Michael Pritchard

“With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.”
– Abraham Lincoln

LAW
“We do not really break the laws of God, we break ourselves against them. We do not break the law of gravitation by jumping from a skyscraper, we break our necks. Franklin said, ‘He who spits against the wind spits in his own face.’ Our sins find us out.”
-Vance Havner

“The Law can only chase a man to Calvary, no further.”
– D.L. Moody

LAYMEN 
“The ‘layman’ need never think of his humbler task as being inferior to that of his minister. Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called, and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It is not what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred or secular, it is why he does it.”
– A. W. Tozer 

LEADERSHIP
“If you wish to build a ship, do not divide the men into teams and send them to the forest to cut wood. Instead, teach them to long for the vast and endless sea.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exupery

On Thursday, April 12, 1945, Vice-President Harry S. Truman became the 33rd President upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He recalled:

I knew at once that something unusual had taken place. Mrs. Roosevelt seemed calm in her characteristic, graceful dignity. She stepped forward and placed her arm gently about my shoulder. “Harry,” she said quietly, “the President is dead.” For a moment I could not bring myself to speak. … “Is there anything I can do for you?” I asked at last. I shall never forget her deeply understanding reply. “Is there anything we can do for you?” she asked. “For you are the one in trouble now.”

“The future has always looked bleak til people with brains and faith…found a way to make it better…”
– Ronald Reagan

“Things get very lonely in Washington sometimes. The real voice of the great people of America sometimes sounds faint and distant in that strange city.”
– Woodrow Wilson

“The presidency has made every man who occupied it, no matter how small, bigger than he was: and no matter how big, not big enough for its demands.”
– Lyndon Baines Johnson

“A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.”
– Richard M. Nixon

“A coach must think of people in terms of their potential rather than their performance. Unless he believes that people possess more capability than they are currently expressing, he will not be able to help them.”
– Sir John Whitmore

“Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.”
– Harry Truman

“When you get to be President, there are all those things, the honors, the twenty-one gun salutes, all those things. You have to remember it isn’t for you. It’s for the Presidency.”
– Harry Truman

“Every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is growing or swelling.”
– Woodrow Wilson

“Leadership is only half of the picture. Functionality is the goal. The purpose of leadership is to facilitate functionality.”
– Tony Cooke

“You have to really love your people to get the most out of them.”
– John Wooden

“Some people make the lives of others better. They are leaders. Others talk about making peoples’ lives better. They are politicians.”
– Richard Blackaby

“A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.”
– Arnold Glasow

“Whatever you do in life, surround yourself with smart people who’ll argue with you.”
– Coach John Wooden

“Spiritual leaders are not elected, appointed, or created by synods or church assemblies. God alone makes them.”
– J. Oswald Sanders

“Many leaders want to give responsibility without authority. Many staff members want authority without accountability. Responsibility + Authority + Accountability = Productivity.”
– Jerry Weinzierl

“If you are doing everything, you can’t be leading anything.”
– Ray Eppard

“May you live long for us!”
This is a Yoruba salutation usually made to a king. It is a prayer for their long life and implies that the longer the king reigns, the longer the citizens of the kingdom enjoys and benefits from his benevolence, influence, and leadership. Shared with me by Adebayo Adewale Ademiju

“If you’re a leader, lives should be better because of the influence you’ve had.”
– Tony Dungy

“The prime function of a leader is to keep hope alive.”
– John Gardner

“Good spiritual leaders know full well that they are only shepherds, not saviors; they know they are leaders, but not lords; they understand that they may be skillful guides, but they are not gods.”
– Lynn Anderson

“Spiritual leadership is the power to change the atmosphere by one’s presence, the unconscious influence that makes Christ and spiritual things real to others.”
– J. Oswald Sanders

“We don’t train leaders because it’s a trendy thing to do. We train leaders because it’s a biblical thing to do.”
– Tony Cooke

“Don’t follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you.”
– Margaret Thatcher

“Leadership is not nearly as much about your title, your position, or your authority as it is about your character, your example, and your influence.”
– Tony Cooke

“People would rather follow a leader who’s always real than one who’s always right.”
– Craig Groeschel

“My athletes always follow my advice… unless it conflicts with what that they want to do.”
– Lou Holtz

“Insecure leaders think everything is about them, and as a result, every action, every piece of information, every decision is put through their filter of self-centeredness.”
– John Maxwell

“Great leaders make great decisions to accomplish great feats. Average leaders make average decisions and have maintenance tenure. Poor leaders make poor decisions that hurt the cause and harm their followers.”
– John Borek, Danny Lovett, Elmer Towns (The Good Book on Leadership)

“A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman of the next generation.”
– J.F. Clarke

“The first quality of the commander-in-chief is a cool head to receive a correct impression of things. He should not allow himself to be confused by either good or bad news.”
– Napoleon

“The man who follows the crowd will never be followed by a crowd.”
– Unknown

“I have an absolute rule. I refuse to make a decision that somebody else can make. The first rule of leadership is to save yourself for the big decision. Don’t allow your mind to become cluttered with the trivia. Don’t let yourself become the issue.”
– Richard Nixon

“Leaders looking for reasons to quit usually do not have to look far.”
– John Borek, Danny Lovett, Elmer Towns (The Good Book on Leadership)

“You want leaders driven by mission – not by adrenaline. No one wants to work with people who need to be heroes more than they need to be catalysts.”
– Robert Watson

“You can’t lead well if you’re not led well.”
– Tony Cooke

“I praised the nonstarters more than the starters (nonstarters need encouragement, while starters are getting plenty off the court). And I rarely praised scorers in front of others, but openly complimented players who did the less glamorous tasks—rebounding, passing, blocking.”
– John Wooden

“Leadership is an ever-evolving position.”
– Mike Krzyzewski

“Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.”
– Colin Powell

“I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.”
– Mohandas Gandhi

“Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.”
– Colin Powell

“A competent leader can get efficient service from poor troops, while on the contrary an incapable leader can demoralize the best of troops.”
– John J Pershing

“The art of leadership is saying no, not saying yes. It is very easy to say yes.”
– Tony Blair

“A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.”
– John Wooden

“The leadership “trinity” involves authority, responsibility, and accountability.”
– Warren Wiersbe

“People prefer to follow those who help them, not those who intimidate them.”
– C. Gene Wilkes

“Clarity is the preoccupation of the effective leader. If you do nothing else as a leader, be clear.”
– Marcus Buckingham

“The central task of leadership is influencing God’s people toward God’s purposes.”
– Robert Clinton

“Leaders who insulate themselves from others and choose to bear their burdens single-handedly are destined for loneliness and burnout. Leaders, like everyone else, need friends and perhaps in light of the load they carry, even more so.”
– Henry and Richard Blackaby

“A spiritual leader is not one who ‘wins’ by beating others. A spiritual leader is one whose true victory is in helping other people win.”
– Tony Cooke

“Nothing so conclusively proves a man’s ability to lead others, as what he does from day to day to lead himself.”
– Thomas J. Watson

“True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not the enrichment of the leaders.”
– Robert Townsend

“Perhaps the most central characteristic of authentic leadership is the relinquishing of the impulse to dominate others.”
– David Cooper

“A tragic flaw of many leaders is that they cannot recognize their limits or acknowledge their need for others as the demands of work or ministry scale up dramatically.”
– Wayne Cordeiro (from “Leading on Empty)

“Spiritual leaders do not cultivate a dependency in others upon themselves; they teach others to think biblically and to rely upon the Holy Spirit.”
-Tony Cooke (From “Qualified”)

“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality, the last is to say ‘thank you.’ In between the two, the leader must become a servant.”
– Max De Pree

“Vision without integrity is not mission – it’s manipulation.”
– Howard G. Hendricks

“A leader is an average, everyday person who is highly motivated.”
– Theodore Roosevelt

“Leaders need to cultivate two things: a righteous heart and a rhinoceros skin.”
– Chuck Swindoll

“Leadership consists of character and strategy. If you can’t have both, opt for character.”
– General Norman Schwarzkopf

“Leadership is a verb, not a noun.”
– Bill Gore

“In order to be a leader, a man must have followers. And to have followers, a man must have their confidence. Hence the supreme quality for a leader unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, on a football field, in an army, or in an office. If a man’s associates find him guilty of phoniness, if they find that he lacks forthright integrity, he will fail. His teachings and actions must square with each other. The first great need, therefore, is integrity and high purpose.”
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

“If I had to sum up in one word what makes a good manager, I’d say decisiveness. You can use the fanciest computers to gather the numbers, but in the end you have to set a timetable and act.”
– Lee J. Iacocca

“Leaders create energy in others by instilling purpose to what people do.”
– Steve Sullivan

“Leaders have two important characteristics: First, they’re going somewhere; second, they’re able to persuade other people to go along with them.”
– Maximilien a François Robespierre

“A leader’s job is to make it easy to do the right thing and difficult to do the wrong thing.”
– Unknown

“The leader works in the open and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.”
– Theodore Roosevelt

“When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.”
– Winston Churchill

“Our responsibility is one of decision, for to govern is to choose.”
– John F. Kennedy

“We don’t want to be like the leader in the French Revolution who said, ‘There go my people. I must find out where they are going so I can lead them.’”
– John F. Kennedy

“It is time for a new generation of leadership, to cope with new problems and new opportunities. For there is a new world to be won.”
– John F. Kennedy

“Great leadership occurs when you understand your own motives, your “dark side,” what you want to misrepresent in order to look better than you really are.”
– Nancy Ortberg

“Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence, seeing how you react. If you’re in control, they’re in control.”
– Tom Landry

“Leadership is getting someone to do what they don’t want to do, to achieve what they want to achieve.”
– Tom Landry

“When I was a young boy, I was at a gravel pit with my father and a young man.  They had a team of horses and were attempting to pull a load up a steep road.  The young man driving the horses was loud and abusive. In response, the animals were hyper and agitated. They worked against each other and, as a result, couldn’t pull the load. With a gentle voice and a gentler touch, my dad calmed the horses and walked them forward with the load. When the horses cooperated, they could do much more than when they didn’t work together. I learned two important lessons that day: (1) Gentleness is a better method of getting cooperation than harshness is; (2) A team can accomplish much more when it works together than individuals can when they work alone.”
– John Wooden

“A leader who takes no cues from the people is a dictator; the leader who tries to satisfy every critic gains neither respect nor effectiveness.  Both extremes sabotage pastoral ministry. The pastor is not above criticism, arrogantly above criticism, nor is the pastor a garbage dump, passively accepting the abuse of the disgruntled.”
– Marshall Shelley

“Leadership is action, not position.”
– D. H. McGannon

“Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don’t interfere.”
– Ronald Reagan

“Making the effort to improve as a human being is what Coach Lombardi was all about. He was able to see the gap between where we were and what we could become—both as football players and as people. And he felt it was his God-given responsibility to close that gap.”
– Jerry Kramer, former Packers guard

“My main job was developing talent. I was a gardener providing water and other nourishment to our top 750 people. Of course, I had to pull a few weeds, too.”
– Jack Welsh

“Ego-centered, ego-prominent leadership betrays the Master. The best leadership in spiritual communities formed in the name of Jesus, the Messiah, is inconspicuous, not calling attention to itself, but not sacrificing anything in the way of conviction and firmness, either. …ill-directed and badly formed spiritual leadership causes much damage in souls.”
– Eugene Peterson (from the introduction to the pastoral epistles in the Message Bible)

“The secret of my success is my ability to attract exceptionally able men and to treat them with so much respect that they never leave.”
– Stanley Resor (1879-1962), A giant in the industry, considered to have helped invent modern advertising

“Leadership is not so much about technique and methods as it is about opening the heart. Leadership is about inspiration—of oneself and of others. Great leadership is about human experiences, not processes. Leadership is not a formula or a program, it is a human activity that comes from the heart and considers the hearts of others. It is an attitude, not a routine.”
– Lance Secretan

“A leader is only able to lead others because he disciplines himself. The person who does not know how to bow to discipline imposed from without, who does not know how to obey, will not make a good leader—nor will the one who has not learned to impose discipline within his own life. Those who scorn scripturally or legally constituted authority, or rebel against it, rarely qualify for high leadership positions.”
– Oswald Sanders, from Dynamic Spiritual Leadership

You can employ men and hire hands to work for you, but you must win their hearts to have them work with you.”
– Tiorio

“If you lead through fear, you will have little to respect; but if you lead through respect, you will have little to fear.”
– Unknown

“A leader is a dealer in hope.”
– Napoleon Bonaparte

“If anything goes bad, I did it. If anything goes semi-good, then we did it. If anything goes real good, then you did it. That’s all it takes to get people to win football games for you.”
– Bear Bryant

“It’s critical to distinguish between the skill of performance and the skill of leading the performance, two entirely different skills. It’s also important to determine whether a person is capable of learning leadership.”
– Fred Smith

“He who cannot obey, cannot command.”
– Benjamin Franklin

“The leader who can enlist cooperation and respect, without having to pull rank, has power of the most positive kind.”
– David Crawley

“Do not trust proud, self-seeking leadership.”
– Harold L. Lundquist

“The person who knows how will always have a job. The person who knows why will be boss.”
– Carl Wood

“Leadership requires followership and following is an act of trust, faith in the course of the leader, and that faith can be generated only if leaders act with integrity.”
– Lawrence Miller

“You take people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go.”
– Jeannette Rankin

‘For some must follow, and some command, though all are made of clay!”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“People prefer to follow those who help them, not those who intimidate them.”
– C. Gene Wilkes

“It is only as we develop others that we permanently succeed.”
– Harvey S. Firestone

“You do not lead by hitting people over the head—that’s assault, not leadership.”
– Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.”
– Colin Powell

LEARNING
“The future belongs to the learners—not the knowers.”
– Eric Hoffer

“In every man there is something of which I may learn of him, and in that he is my teacher.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.”
– Harry S. Truman

“I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand.”
– Chinese Proverb

“The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after.”
– Newton D. Baker

“I am still learning.”
– Michaelangelo

“The inlet of a man’s mind is what he learns; the outlet is what he accomplishes. If his mind is not fed by a continued supply of new ideas, which he puts to work with purpose, and if there is no outlet in action, his mind becomes stagnant. Such a mind is a danger to the individual who owns it and is useless to the community.”
– Jeremiah W. Jenks

“Learning is not compulsory… neither is survival.”
– W. Edwards Deming

LEGACY
“You have been speaking about Dr. Carey; when I am gone, say nothing about Dr. Carey — speak about Dr. Carey’s God.”
– William Carey (on his deathbed, to a friend)

“It is not the honor that you take with you, but the heritage you leave behind.”
– Branch Rickey

“Great lives do not go out. They go on.”
– Benjamin Harrison

“Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost.”
– Robert H. Schuller

LEGALISM
“Legalism lacks the supreme sense of worship. It obeys but it does not adore.”
– Geerhardus Vos

“When there’s something in the Bible that churches don’t like, they call it ‘legalism.”
– Leonard Ravenhill

LIBERTY
“True liberty is not the power to live as we please, but to live as we ought.”
– A.W. Pink

“The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.”
– Henry Ward Beecher

“Our liberty is under God and can be found nowhere else. May our faith be…not merely stamped upon our coins, but expressed in our lives.”
– Peter Marshall

“Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.”
– Theodore Roosevelt

“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.”
– Alexis de Tocqueville

LIES
“If you want the truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pull it; but if you want a lie to go round the world it will fly; it is as light as a feather, and a breath will carry it.”
– Charles Spurgeon

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
– Mark Twain

“There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true.”
– Winston Churchill

LIFE
Four things to learn in life:
“To think clearly without hurry or confusion;
To love everybody sincerely;
To act in everything with the highest motives;
To trust God unhesitatingly.”
– Helen Keller

“Lord, let me live until I die.”
– Will Rogers

“How to put out fires:
STOP reacting to the stupid stuff.
DROP your irritation and anger.
ROLL – Get on with your life.”
– Dale Bronner

“In life you need either inspiration or desperation.”
– Tony Robbins

“Let us think of a Christian believer in whose life the twin wonders of repentance and the new birth have been wrought. He is now living according to the will of God as he understands it from the written Word. Of such a one it may be said that every act of his life is or can be as truly sacred as prayer or baptism or the Lord’s Supper. To say this is not to bring all acts down to one dead level; it is rather to lift every act up into a living kingdom and turn the whole of life into a sacrament.”
– A.W. Tozer

“When someone has had a ‘close call’ with death, people sometimes say that they are ‘living on borrowed time.’ The fact is, we’re all living on ‘gifted time.’ Our lives—every breath, every moment—are gifts from God. Enjoy them, celebrate them, and use them purposefully.”
– Tony Cooke

“Every man who loses everlasting life rejects it himself. God denies it not to him—he will not come that he may have life.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon

“You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.”
– Billy Graham

“Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.”
– Ovid

“Today, you have 100% of your life left.”
– Tom Landry

“It’s not how long you live, it’s how well you live.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.

“I am convinced that only when a man is prepared to die is he also prepared to live.”
– Billy Graham

“Life is made up of two phases: In the first you try to make a name for yourself and in the second you try to keep it.”

“We’ve learned how to lengthen life, but we don’t know how to deepen it.”
-Vance Havner

“Someone wrote a sign, ‘Life is one contradiction after another.’ Another person saw the sign and wrote under it, ‘No, it’s not’.”

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
– Oscar Wilde

“Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”
– Mark Twain

“Life is never easy.  There is work to be done and obligations to be met – obligations to truth, to justice, and to liberty.”
– John F. Kennedy

“I believe the religion of Christ covers the whole man. Why shouldn’t a man play baseball or lawn-tennis? … Don’t imagine that you have got to go into a cave to be consecrated, and stay there all your life. Whatever you take up, take it up with all your heart.”
– Dwight L. Moody

“There is a danger of doing too much as well as of doing too little. Life is not for work, but work for life, and when it is carried to the extent of undermining life or unduly absorbing it, work is not praiseworthy but blameworthy.”
– Ralph Turnbull

“Today, you have 100% of your life left.”
– Tom Landry

“It has been a grand journey – well-worth living once.”
– Winston Churchill

“In three words, I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.”
– Robert Frost

“When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’”
– Sydney J. Harris

“Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is a beauty, admire it. Life is a dream, realize it. Life is a challenge, meet it. Life is a duty, complete it. Life is a game, play it. Life is a promise, fulfill it. Life is sorrow, overcome it. Life is a song, sing it. Life is a struggle, accept it. Life is a tragedy, confront it. Life is an adventure, dare it. Life is luck, make it. Life is life, fight for it!”
– Mother Teresa

LIFESTYLE
“It may be difficult for the average Christian to get hold of the idea that his daily labors can be performed as acts of worship acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.”
– A. W. Tozer

“We do not trust those persons who have two faces, nor will men believe in those whose verbal and practical testimonies are contradictory. As actions, according to the proverb, speak louder than words, so an ill life will effectually drown the voice of the most eloquent ministry.”
– Charles Spurgeon

“People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do.”
– Lewis Cass

Spurgeon said, “We have all heard the story of the man who preached so well and lived so badly, that when he was in the pulpit everybody said he ought never to come out again, and when he was out of it they all declared he never ought to enter it again.”

LIGHT
“Men come and go; leaders, teachers, thinkers speak and work for a season, and then fall silent and impotent. He abides. They die, but He lives. They are lights kindled, and, therefore, sooner or later quenched; but He is the true light from which they draw all their brightness, and He shines for evermore.”
– Alexander MacLaren

“The light that shines the farthest will shine the brightest at home.”
– Oswald J. Smith

“Light physical is said by Solomon to be sweet, but gospel light is infinitely more precious, for it reveals eternal things, and ministers to our immortal natures.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon

“The darkest night since the beginning of time did not turn out a single star.”
– Unknown

LIKEABILITY
“If you want to be well-liked by others, don’t set out to make yourself liked. You will only be thinking of yourself that way. Instead, develop a sincere and genuine interest in the other fellow and being liked will follow naturally.”

LIMITATIONS
“Everything has its limit—iron ore cannot be educated into gold.”
– Mark Twain

“No matter what our circumstances, our greatest limitation isn’t the leader above us—it’s the spirit within us.”
– John Maxwell

LISTENING
“The biggest mistake you can make in trying to talk convincingly is to put your highest priority on expressing your ideas and feelings. What most people really want is to be listened to, respected, and understood. The moment people see that they are being understood, they become more motivated to understand your point of view.”
– Dr. David Burns

“A suffering person does not need a lecture – he needs a listener.”
– Billy Graham

“Listening to the Word is a great art – perhaps as much as preaching it. If our listeners prepared themselves by prayer as much as our preachers, what a revival we should enjoy.”
– Donald Gee

“Good listeners are not only popular everywhere, but after a while they know something.”

“A high school class in music appreciation was asked the difference between listening and hearing. At first there was no response. Finally, a hand went up and a youngster offered his wise definition: ‘Listening is wanting to hear’.”

“It seem rather incongruous that in a society of super-sophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.”
– Erma Bombeck

Retire from the world each day to some private spot.  Stay in the secret place till the surrounding noises begin to fade out of your heart and a sense of God’s presence envelops you.  Deliberately tune out the unpleasant sounds and come out of your closet determined not to hear them.  Listen for the inward voice till you learn to recognize it.
– A.W. Tozer

“The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say.  It’s terribly important for everyone to get involved.  Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys.”
– Sam Walton

“God is our true Friend, who always gives us the counsel and comfort we need.  Our danger lies in resisting Him; so it is essential that we acquire the habit of hearkening to His voice, or keeping silence within, and listening so as to lose nothing of what He says to us.”
– Francois Fenelon

“Whoever will listen will hear the speaking heaven. This is definitely not the hour when men take kindly to an exhortation to listen, for listening is not today a part of popular religion. We are at the opposite end of the pole from there. Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity and bluster make a man dear to God.”
– A.W. Tozer

“Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice.”
– Shakespeare

“Before we can speak God’s message, we must learn to listen.  The opened ear comes before the opened mouth.”
– A.B. Simpson

“The word ‘listen’ contains the same letters as the word ‘silent.’”
– Unknown

“To be able to listen to others in a sympathetic and understanding manner is, perhaps, the most effective mechanism in the world for getting along with people, and tying up their friendship for good.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes

“If you can listen well, people will say you’re a good conversationalist.”
– Gil Schwartz

“The first duty of love is to listen.”
– Paul Tillich

“The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.”
– Ralph Nichols

“When you talk, you repeat what you already know; when you listen, you often learn something.
– Jared Sparks

“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said.”
– Peter Drucker

LONELINESS
“Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfillment.”
– Richard J. Foster

“Loneliness and the feeling of being uncared for and unwanted are the greatest poverty.”
– Mother Teresa

LONGEVITY
“When it rains, I let it.”
– 113 year old man explaining the secret of his longevity

The older I get, the less interested I am in what’s new, and the more interested I am in what endures.”
– James Hynes

LOOSENESS
“I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels.”
– John Calvin

LORDSHIP
“No man can be a Christian by knowingly and willfully taking Christ on the installment plan, as Savior now, and Lord later.”
– Vance Havner

“If I had only one sermon to preach it would be on the Lordship of Christ. When we get right on that point we are right all down the line. God honors the exaltation of His Son.”
– Vance Havner

“God will not accept a divided heart.  He must be absolute monarch.  There is not room in your heart for two thrones.  You cannot mix the worship of the true God with the worship of any other god more than you can mix oil and water.  It cannot be done.  There is not room for any other throne in the heart if Christ is there.  If worldliness should come in, godliness would go out.”
– D.L. Moody

“There is not an inch of any sphere of life over which Jesus Christ does not say, ‘Mine.’”
– Abraham Kuyper

LOSS
“He loseth nothing that loseth not God.”
– George Herbert

LOVE
“Faith makes all things possible … love makes all things easy.” 
– D.L. Moody 

“The Pentecostal power, when you sum it all up, is just more of God’s love. If it does not bring more love, it is simply a counterfeit.” 
—William J. Seymour  

“Love is the great conqueror of lust.”
– C.S. Lewis

“It is impossible to love Christ without loving others, and it is impossible to love others without moving nearer to Christ.”
– Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“Faith is responding to problems like God would. Love is responding to people like God would.”
– Doug Jones

“Truth without love destroys. Love without truth deceives.”
– Dave Earley

What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.
– Augustine

“More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all the theological arguments in the world.”
– William Barclay

“Love is not a feeling, love is a response. Love is an action.”
– David Jeremiah

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
– C.S. Lewis

“Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.”
– Warren Wiersbe

“Love deems this world worth rescuing.”
– Philip Yancey

“The fruit of the Spirit that He brought from heaven out of the heart of the crucified Christ, and that He gives in our heart, is first and foremost—love.”
– Andrew Murray

“Oh boundless love divine! How shall this tongue of mine, To wondering mortals tell The matchless grace divine – that I, a child of hell, Should in His image shine.”
– From the hymn, The Comforter Has Come

“The Soul is shriveled up and buried in a grave that does not love.”
– Thomas Traherne

“If they can see you love them, you can say anything to them.”
– Richard Baxter

“Love is the sum of all virtue, and love disposes us to do good.”
– Jonathan Edwards

“We look forward to the time when the power to love will replace the love of power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.”
– William Gladstone

“Love does not dominate; it cultivates.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The test of love is in how one relates not to saints and scholars, but to rascals.”
– Abraham Joshua Heschel

“To love another person is to help them love God.”
– Soren Kierkegaard

“The significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all law.”
– Reinhold Niebuhr

“Love me when I least deserve it, because that’s when I really need it.”
– Swedish Proverb

“The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides, and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.”
– Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“It is our care for the helpless, our practice of loving kindness, that brands us in the eyes of many of our opponents. ‘Look!’ they say. ‘How they love one another! Look how they are prepared to die for one another.'”
– Tertullian

“He does much who loves much.”
– Thomas a’ Kempis

“It is possible to love your friends, your competitors, and even your enemies. It is hard, bitterly hard, but there is a long distance between hard and impossible.”
– Herbert Welch

“Our only business is to love and delight ourselves in God.”
– Brother Lawrence

“Every Christian would agree that a man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God.”
– C.S. Lewis

“All is vanity but to love God and serve Him.”
– Thomas a’ Kempis

“’God is Love’ means that He tries constantly to block your route to destruction.”
– Billy Graham

“If you do not feel a fervent love and profound pity for humanity, be assured that the gift of Christian eloquence has been denied you. You will not win souls, neither will you acquire that most excellent of earthly sovereignties – sovereignty over human hearts….Love is irresistible.”
– D.L. Moody

“You called, You cried, You shattered my deafness, You sparkled, You blazed, You drove away my blindness, You shed Your fragrance, and I drew in my breath, and I pant for You.”
– Augustine

“Take away love and the earth is a tomb.”
– Robert Browning

“Love that reaches up is adoration. Love that reaches across is affection. Love that reaches down is grace.”
– Donald Grey Barnhouse

“Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.

“We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”
– Johann von Goethe

“I not only want to be loved, I want to be told that I’m loved.”
– George Elliot

“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.”
– Oscar Wilde

“No woman or man really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.”
– Mark Twain

“Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.”
– Zig Ziglar

“Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.”
– Blaise Pascal

“Love is a better master than duty.”
– Albert Einstein

“The love of God is no mere sentimental feeling; it is redemptive power!”
– Charles Clayton Morrison

“The opposite of biblical love is not hate, it is apathy.”
– Gary Thomas

“If you can really make a man believe you love him, you have won him; and if I could only make people really believe that God loves them, what a rush we would see for the kingdom of God!”
– Dwight L. Moody

LOYALTY
“Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved.
– Martin Luther

“There is one element that is worth its weight in gold and that is loyalty.  It will cover a multitude of weaknesses.”
– Philip D. Armour

“I have signed on for the voyage and would stick to the ship.”
– Winston Churchill

“Great souls are always loyally submissive, reverent to what is over them: only small mean souls are otherwise.
– Thomas Carlyle

LUCK
“I am a firm believer in luck and find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”
– Stephen Leacock

“Shallow men believe in luck and circumstance. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Good and bad luck is a synonym in the great majority of instances, for good and bad judgment.”
– Winston Churchill

“Luck? I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it, and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard work and realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t.
– Lucille Ball

LYING
“We start off by lying to others (v. 6), we continue by lying to ourselves (v. 8), and finally we end up lying to God and making Him out to be a liar (v. 10). The decline goes from hypocrisy to duplicity to apostasy.”
– Warren Wiersbe (commenting on 1 John 1)

“How many times do you get to lie before you are a liar?”
– Michael Josephson

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