Quotes by Public Speakers

When I walked into the Christian section of a bookstore, the message was clear: Faith is something you do alone. Rick does not have much tolerance for people living alone. He’s like Bill Clinton in that he feels everyone’s pain. If Rick thinks somebody is lonely, he can’t sleep at night. He wants us all to live with each other and play nice so he can get some rest. Tortured soul.
Donald Miller
We praise our leaders when they act against our adversaries. But when our own interest is threatened, we begin to dislike the same leaders, irrespective of the sincerity of their intentions. An effective leader is bound to create enemies.
Awdhesh Singh
It was the waiting and watching that cost the most. For during that time he had to endure.
Orson Scott Card
Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.
Orson Scott Card
The root systems of these lies we tell ourselves tend to grow together. It’s all connected with the belief human love is conditional. But human love isn’t conditional. No love is conditional. If love is conditional, it’s just some sort of manipulation masquerading as love.
Donald Miller
It is said in the Upanishads: ‘I am the Universe.’ If you ask a hundred people as to how they find the world, they are all likely to give different answers. For some, the world is beautiful and the people are good, while for others, the world is extremely bad, and the people are treacherous and sinful. Why the same world is different for different people? It is so, because the outer world is the projection of our inner world. Therefore, the only way to improve the world outside is to improve the world within. While we may not have any control over the outside world, we can change our world within and thus change the world outside.
Awdhesh Singh
You will soon learn that there ARE no strange stars, no alien skies"- No?"Only skies and stars, in all their varieties. Each one with its own flavour, and all flavours good"- Now YOU think like a tree. Flavours! Of skies!"I have tasted the heat of many stars, and all of them were sweet
Orson Scott Card
One of the greatest barriers to connection is the cultural importance we place on "going it alone." Somehow we've come to equate success with not needing anyone. Many of us are willing to extend a helping hand, but we're very reluctant to reach out for help when we need it ourselves. It's as if we've divided the world into "those who offer help" and "those who need help." The truth is that we are both.
Brené Brown
I once listened to an Indian on television say that God was in the wind and the water, and I wondered at how beautiful that was because it meant you could swim in Him or have Him brush your face in a breeze.
Donald Miller
Soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they've been given.
Orson Scott Card
Isn’t it amazing, amazing, amazing that something so specific can be so resonant? These are the filaments, filaments, filaments from that Walt Whitman poem. It makes me think that the thoughts that I have in my head that make me feel the most lonely because I don’t think anyone else thinks them, are also the thoughts that have the most potential that make me feel connected. I just have to get them out some how gossamer thread.
Ze Frank
A man without a wife and babies is a menace to civilization... One bachelor is an irritation. Ten thousand bachelors are a war.
Orson Scott Card
But if you caught my informant,' said Achilles, 'why in the world would Chamrajnagar—or Graff, if it was him—launch the shuttle anyway? Was catching me doing something naughty so important they’d risk a shuttle and it’s crew just to catch me? I find that quite… flattering. Sort of like winning the Nobel Prize for scariest villain.
Orson Scott Card
Given the dark fears we feel when we experience loss, nothing is more generous and loving than the willingness to embrace grief in order to forgive. To be forgiven is to be loved.
Brené Brown
Aw, Poke, you poor, kind, decent, stupid girl. You saved me and I let you down.
Orson Scott Card
In the six degrees of separation, not all degrees are equal.
Malcolm Gladwell
If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words.
Fran Lebowitz
You frighten me, when you say there isn't time.""I don't see why. Christians have been expecting the imminent end of the world for millennia.""But it keeps not ending.""So far, so good.
Orson Scott Card
Evil is termed as sin because it has the power to attract the mind. It acts upon our mind and heart to do what nature desires, even when such acts are prohibited by the laws of society. We feel guilty doing things that nature has designed as perfectly natural.
Awdhesh Singh
I bring this up because in writing some thoughts about a father, or not having a father, I feel as though I'm writing a book about a troll under a bridge or a dragon. For me, a father was nothing more than a character in a fairy tale. I know fathers are not like dragons because fathers actually exist. I have seen them on television and sliding their arms around their wives in grocery stores, and I have seen them in the malls and in the coffee shops, but these were characters in other people's stories. The sad thing is, as a kid, I wondered why I couldn't have a dragon, but I never wondered why I didn't have a father. (page 20)
Donald Miller
Sometimes the things we want most in life are the things that will kill us.
Donald Miller
Does it help if we're so strong-willed, stubborn, ambitious, and selfish that we always overcome everything in our way no matter what?" asked Wang-mu."I think those are the pertinent virtues, yes," said Peter."Then let's do it. That's us in spades.
Orson Scott Card
I only accept and pay attention to feedback from people who are also in the arena. If you're occasionally getting your butt kicked as you respond, and if you're also figuring out how to stay open to feedback without getting pummeled by insults, I'm more likely to pay attention to your thought about my work. If, on the other hand, you're not helping, contributing, or wrestling with your own gremlins, I'm not at all interested in your commentary.
Brené Brown
Personal affection is a luxury you can have only after all your enemies are eliminated. Until then, everyone you love is a hostage, sapping your courage and corrupting your judgment.
Orson Scott Card
We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.
Orson Scott Card
Maybe that's who you are, what you remember.
Orson Scott Card
I will remember this, thought Ender, when I am defeated. To keep dignity, and give honor where it's due, so that defeat is not disgrace. And I hope I don't have to do it often.
Orson Scott Card
I can see by your face that I'll never persuade you. And that's surprising, because usually you at least try to see my side."I can see your side," said Cecily. "I've got a much clearer view of it than you do, from over here on my side.
Orson Scott Card
When you judge yourself for needing help, you judge those you are helping. When you attach value to giving help, you attach value to needing help.
Brené Brown
Until we can receive with an open heart, we're never really giving with an open heart. When we attach judgment to receiving help, we knowingly or unknowingly attach judgment to giving help.
Brené Brown
He captures memories because if he forgets them, it's as though they didn't happen.
Donald Miller
Even if you do nothing, say nothing and be nothing, there will still be many who will criticize you. It is much better to be criticized for success than be condemned for failures because success rids you of the many miseries of life.
Awdhesh Singh
He was not prepared to deal with my mistake, thought Jane, and he did not understand the suffering his response would cause me. He is innocent of wrong -doing, and so am I. We shall forgive each other and go on. It was a good decision, and Jane was proud of it. The trouble was, she couldn't carry it out. Those few seconds in which parts of her mind came to a halt were not trivial in their effect on her. There was trauma, loss, change; she was not now the same being that she had been before. parts of her had died. Parts of her had become confused, out of order...She discovered, as many a living being had discovered, that rational decisions are far more easily made than carried out.
Orson Scott Card
Worrying about scarcity is our culture's version of post-traumatic stress. It happens when we've been through too much, and rather than coming together to heal (which requires vulnerability) we're angry and scared and at each other's throats.
Brené Brown
The inciting incident is how you get (characters) to do something. It's the doorway through which they can't return, you know. The story takes care of the rest.
Donald Miller
He splashed into the water, his whole body, not with the reverent attitude of prayer, but with a desperate thirst; he buried his head under the water and drank deep, with his cheek against the cold stone of the riverbed, the water tumbling over his back, his calves. He drank and drank, lifted his head and shoulders above the water to gasp in the evening air, and then collapsed into the water again, to drink as greedily as before.It was a kind of prayer, though, he realized as he emerged, freezing cold as the water evaporated from his skin in the breeze of the dark morning.I am with you, he said to the Oversoul. I'll do whatever you ask, because I long for you to accomplish your purpose here.
Orson Scott Card
...legitimacy is based on three things. First of all, the people who are asked to obey authority have to feel like they have a voice--that if they speak up, they will be heard. Second, the law has to be predictable. There has to be a reasonable expectation that the rules tomorrow are going to be roughly the same as the rules today. And third, the authority has to be fair. It can't treat one group differently from another.
Malcolm Gladwell
About the time I told God that He didn't exist, I was desperate for an identity.
Donald Miller
In the book of Alma is a story that has fascinated e since I first read it. it is about a very colorful character named Moroni--not to be confused with the last survivor of the Nephites, who was also named Moroni. This man was a brilliant military commander, and he rose to be supreme commander of all the Nephite forces at the age of twenty-five. For the next fourteen years he was off to the wars continuously except for two very short periods of peace during which he worked feverishly at reinforcing the Nephite defenses. When peace finally came, he was thirty-nine years old, and the story goes that at the age of forty-three he died. Sometime before this he had given the chief command of the armies of the Nephites to his son Moronihah. Now, if he had a son, he had a wife. I've often wondered where she was and how she fared during those fourteen years of almost continuous warfare, and how she felt to have him die so soon after coming home. I am sure there are many, many stories of patience and sacrifice that have never been told. We each do our part, and we each have our story.
Marjorie Pay Hinckley
Perhaps one of the reasons I've avoided standing on the point toward the horizon is the second you stand up and point toward a horizon, you realize how much there is to lose.
Donald Miller
It is of vital importance to [Mandela] to be courteous and grateful at all times, as we never know whether we will have the opportunity to thank people or pay respect whenever they have been good to you.
Zelda la Grange
...the words alone, lonely, and loneliness are three of the most powerful words in the English language...those words say that we are human; they are like the words hunger and thirst. But they are not words about the body, they are words about the soul.
Donald Miller
Truly successful decision-making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.
Malcolm Gladwell
Being here alone with nothing to do, I've been thinking about myself too. Trying to understand why I hate myself so badly.
Orson Scott Card
The rising strong reckoning has two deceptively simple parts: (1) engaging with our feelings, and (2) getting curious about the story behind the feelings--what emotions we're experiencing and how they are connected to our thoughts and behaviors.
Brené Brown
Much of what we consider valuable in our world arises out of (these) one-sided conflicts. Because the act of facing overwhelming odds, produces greatness and beauty.
Malcolm Gladwell
A true leader is responsible for his followers who have reposed their faith in his leadership. If an ordinary man fails, it is a personal failure. But when a leader fails, he shatters the entire ideologies, principles and morale of all those who followed him. The impact is much bigger and stakes are higher.
Awdhesh Singh
Eko brushed a tear from her eye, and Immo jeered at her, but father held up a hand. "Never mock a tender heart," he said.
Orson Scott Card
Since we are not yet fully comfortable with the idea that people from the next village are as human as ourselves, it is presumptuous in the extreme to suppose we could ever look at sociable, tool-making creatures who arose from other evolutionary paths and see not beasts but brothers, not rivals by fellow pilgrims journeying to the shrine of intelligence. Yet that is what I see, or yearn to see. The difference between raman and varelse is not in the creature judged but in the creature judging, and when we declare an alien species to be raman, it does not mean that they have passed a threshold of moral maturity. It means that we have.
Orson Scott Card
I would carry some of it if I could, Bean said silently. Like I did today, you can turn it over to me and I’ll do it, if I can. You don’t have to do this alone.Only even as he thought this, Bean knew it wasn’t true. If it could be done, Ender was the one who would have to do it. All those months when Bean refused to see Ender, hid from him, it was because he couldn’t bear to face the fact that Ender was what Bean only wished to be — the kind of person on whom you could put all your hopes, who could carry all your fears, and he would not let you down, would not betray you.I want to be the kind of boy you are, thought Bean. But I don’t want to go through what you’ve been through to get there.
Orson Scott Card
You accomplish exactly as much as the people who serve you decide you'll accomplish, and nothing more.
Orson Scott Card
The mountains themselves call us into greater stories.
Donald Miller
I will never hurt you.I will always help you.If you are hungryIll give you my food.If you are frightenedI am your friend.I love you now.And love does not end.
Orson Scott Card
Everybody wants to be somebody fancy. Even if they're shy.
Donald Miller
I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.
Donald Miller
Every faith has logic even though people after developing faith forget the logic behind the faith. There is a strong logic behind the creation of religion—the greatest symbol of human faith—that has provided a common code of conduct and belief, and brought millions or even billions of people together. Religion has benefited man even materialistically, as it reduced the conflict between individuals and ushered in a long era of peace and prosperity.
Awdhesh Singh
All this gave way to my first encounter with guilt, which is still something entirely inscrutable to me, as if aliens were sending transmissions from another planet, telling me there is a right and a wrong in the universe.
Donald Miller
We can't pack down hurt, nor can we off-load it to someone else while maintaining our authenticity and integrity. Most of us have been on the receiving end of one of these outbursts. Even if we have the insight to know that our boss, friend, colleague, or partner blew up at us because something tender was triggered and it's not actually about us, it still shatters trust and respect. Living, growing up, working, or worshipping on eggshells creates huge cracks in our sense of safety and self-worth. Over time, it can be experienced as trauma.
Brené Brown
The very concept of evil challenges the wisdom of God because He would never create anything that is not desirable or not needed. Everything has been created in this world with a purpose.
Awdhesh Singh
There are two kinds of hope: the kind you couldn't do anything about and the kind you could. And even if the kind you could do something about wasn't what you'd originally wanted, it was still worth doing. A rainy day is better than no day. A small happiness can make a big sadness less sad.
Rachel Simon