We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.

When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.

Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction.

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and the empiricist world views?

If we were to wipe out insects alone on this planet, the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land. Within a few months.

For me, the peculiar qualities of faith are a logical outcome of this level of biological organization.

If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.

Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal.

A very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.

You must accept that you might fail; then, if you do your best and still don't win, at least you can be satisfied that you've tried. If you don't accept failure as a possibility, you don't set high goals, you don't branch out, you don't try - you don't take the risk.

If you don't accept failure as a possibility, you don't set high goals, you don't branch out, you don't try - you don't take the risk.

If you look at suicides, most of them are connected to depression. And the mental health system just fails them. It's so sad. We know what to do. We just don't do it.

A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be.

There is nothing more important than a good, safe, secure home.

Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement, and death will be part of your journey, but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors. No evil can resist grace forever.

Without exposure to potential failure, there is no risk.

Sin and forgiveness and falling and getting back up and losing the pearl of great price in the couch cushions but then finding it again, and again, and again? Those are the stumbling steps to becoming Real, the only script that's really worth following in this world or the one that's coming.

My trust in God flows out of the experience of his loving me, day in and day out, whether the day is stormy or fair, whether I'm sick or in good health, whether I'm in a state of grace or disgrace. He comes to me where I live and loves me as I am.

The dominant characteristic of an authentic spiritual life is the gratitude that flows from trust - not only for all the gifts that I receive from God, but gratitude for all the suffering. Because in that purifying experience, suffering has often been the shortest path to intimacy with God.

God loves you unconditionally, as you are and not as you should be, because nobody is as they should be.

By and large, the gospel of grace is neither proclaimed, understood, nor lived.

Trust is that rare and priceless treasure that wins us the affection of our heavenly Father.

Childlike surrender and trust, I believe, is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship.

Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul.

It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency.

Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.

I've looked that old scoundrel death in the eye many times but this time I think he has me on the ropes.

In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.

Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.

I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.

They died hard, those savage men - like wounded wolves at bay. They were filthy, and they were lousy, and they stunk. And I loved them.

Could I have but a line a century hence crediting a contribution to the advance of peace, I would yield every honor which has been accorded by war.

The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.

Americans never quit.

A better world shall emerge based on faith and understanding.

Life is a lively process of becoming.

Never be afraid to fail. Failure is only a stepping stone to improvement. Never be overconfident because that will block your improvement.

I have been a big fan of the 'Fast and the Furious' franchise. The films are fast-paced, fun and keep the audience involved. There is a great mix of humor and action, something I really appreciate.

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.

Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory.

Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience... from generation to generation. In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.

I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.

Of course God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God.

Religion always remains higher than everyday life. In order to make the elevation towards religion easier for people, religion must be able to alter its forms in relation to the consciousness of modern man.

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.

For a country to have a great writer is like having a second government. That is why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again.