“We think because we have words, not the other way around. The more words we have, the better able we are to think conceptually.”
“We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are.”
“Alas. What have we done to our good, bawdy, Anglo-Saxon four-letter words? ...We have blunted them so with overuse that they no longer have any real meaning for us. ...When will we be able to redeem our shock words? They have been turned to marshmallows. ...We no longer have anything to cry in time of crisis. 'Help!' we bleat. And no one hears us. 'Help' is another of those four-letter words that don't mean anything any more.”
“The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.”
“It does not matter that we cannot fathom this mystery. The only real problem comes when we think that we have.”
“If we accept that we have at least an iota of free will, we cannot throw it back the moment things go wrong. Like a human parent, God will help us when we ask for help, but in a way that will make us more mature, more real, not in a way that will diminish us.”
“In a moment of crisis we don't act out of reasoned judgment but on our conditioned reflexes. We may be able to send men to the moon, but we'd better remember we're still closely related to Pavlov's dog. Think about driving a car: only the beginning driver thinks as he performs each action; the seasoned driver's body works kinesthetically . . .A driver prevents an accident because of his conditioned reflexes; hands and feet respond more quickly than thought. I'm convinced the same thing is true in all other kinds of crisis, too. We react to our conditioning built up of every single decision we've made all our lives; who we have used as our mirrors, as our points of reference. If our slow and reasoned decisions are generally wise, those which have to be made quickly are apt to be wise, too. If our reasoned decisions are foolish, so will be those of the sudden situation.”