These are quotes which stood out to me, possibly for use in a sermon someday. Their presence here does not mean I agree with them, it merely shows that I might want to reference them later. The default view is five random selections. Use the tag list on the right to view all quotes relevant to that theme.
When Apple computer fell on difficult times, Apple's chairman (Steven Jobs) traveled from Silicon Valley to New York City. His mission was to convince Pepsico's John Sculley to move west and run the struggling company. As the two men overlooked the Manhanntan skyline from Sculley's office, he started to decline the offer. "Financially," Sculley said, "you'd have to give me a million-dollar salary, a million dollar bonus, and million dolloar severance." Stunned but desperate, Jobs agreed. But Sculley would have to move to California. Sculley would only agree to being a consultant from New York. Exasperated, Jobs challenged Sculley: "Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want to change the world?" In his autobiography Odyssey, Sculley admits the challenge "knocked the wind out of me." He'd been so consumed with his petty dreams and his comfortable surroundings that an opportunity to change the world nearly passed him by. He put his life into perspective and went to work for Apple.
Great men are but life-sized. Most of them, indeed, are rather short. – Sir Max Beerbohm, 1920.
Believe in God and you will have to face hours when it seems obvious that this material world is the only reality; disbelieve in Him and you must face hours when this material world seems to shout at you that it is not all. No conviction, religious or irreligious, will, of itself, end once and for all this fifth-columnist in the soul. Only the practice of Faith resulting in the habit of Faith will gradually do that. I define Faith as the power of continuing to believe what we once honestly thought to be true until cogent reasons for honestly changing our minds are brought before us.
Over Spring Break in March of 2006, 30 Chi Alpha students from Bozeman, MT traveled three days by bus to New Orleans to help people recover in the aftermath of Hurrican Katrina: "the most poignant moment came when a student, who is a relatively new Christian, walked into a ruined home and found a Bible still open on the kitchen table - where it has sat adhered by the original (and now dissipated) flood waters for months. 'The Bible was opened to Psalm 90 where it says <em>you are my dwelling place forever,</em>' Lant recalls. 'That moment really changed his life as he came to grips with the fact that earth was just a temporary residence . . . he now views things from a more spiritual perspective, what's most lasting in his life and how temporal materialism is.'"
The Prof will follow Churchill anywhere. Winston's motives for cultivating him are very different. Lindemann's many talents include a matchless gift as an interpreter of science for laymen. In the words of Sir John Colville, Lindemann can "simplify the most opaque problem, scientific, mechanic or economic," translating technical jargon into language which provides "a lucid explanation" and sacrifices "nothing of importance." Churchill loathes scientific terminology. He never even mastered public school arithmetic. The Prof provides him with the essential facts when he needs them without disrupting his concentration on other matters. Like radar, Lindemann's "beautiful brain," as Churchill calls it, will prove worth several divisions in the struggle to save England from Adolf Hitler. Less than ten years from now he will arrive at No. 10 Downing Street with clear, accurate charts which, by replacing statistics, present displays showing England's stockpiles of vital raw materials, the rate at which ships are being launched on the Clyde, the Tyne, and the Barrow, and Britain's production of tanks, artillery, small arms, and warplanes in terms the prime minister can understand with what Colville calls "infallible skill and punctuality."