1997 my collection of Noah's arks has grown and continues to be a favorite stop on tours of the General Conference headquarters. My quotation collection has also expanded, and I share a number of my favorites with you at this year's end.
"You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people's sufferings and not your own."—Flannery O'Connor.
"It's better to be known by six people for something you're proud of than by 60 million for something you're not."— Albert Brooks.
"If the average preacher would listen to some other preacher twice each day for two weeks, he would go home and abbreviate his messages."—Baptist Standard.
"You have achieved excellence as a leader when people will follow you anywhere, if only out of curiosity."—Colin L. Powell.
"Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half have nothing to say and keep on saying it."—Robert Frost.
"If you're treading water, you're losing ground."—Stephen W. Comiskey.
"The best day of my life is when I manage a winning [baseball] game. The second-best day of my life is when I manage a losing game."—Tommy Lasorda.
"If we insist on being as sure as is conceivable, we must be content to creep along the ground, and can never soar."— John Henry Cardinal Newman.
"The reason we criticize and condemn other people is that their methods of sinning are different from ours."—George E. Taylor.
"You can get by on charm for about 15 minutes. After that, you'd better know something."—H. Jackson Brown.
"If you will go to work as Christ designs that His disciples shall, and win souls for Him, you will feel the need of a deeper experience and a greater knowledge in divine things, and will hunger and thirst after righteousness."—Ellen White.
"One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats."—Iris Murdoch.
"If man has any greatness in him, it comes to light—not in one flamboyant hour, but in the ledger of his daily work."—Beryl Markham.
"Where principle is involved, be deaf to expediency."—James Webb.
"I can't think of anything more important to teach young people today than this: that ordinary people working together can change history. They can look for a new Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks or Malcolm X to tell them how to make a difference—but they can also look in the mirror."—Rosa Parks.
"Joy is peace dancing and peace is joy at rest."—F. B. Meyer.
"Our Lord's first obedience was to the will of His Father, not the needs of men; the saving of men was the natural outcome of His obedience to the Father."—Oswald Chambers.
"In a sense, management is prose; leadership is poetry."—Richard M. Nixon.
"My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Saviour." —John Newton.
"I dream for a living!"—Steven Spielberg.
"No matter where you work, seek out the janitor.... They know everything and they know everybody. Don't ever think that you know more than someone who is mopping the floor."—Bill Cosby.
"Soft soap in the pulpit will not cleanse the sinner in the pew."—Notes from a Bible.
"Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle."—Barber Conable.
"Leadership is the ability to hide your panic from others."—Anonymous.
"Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known."—Garrison Keillor.
"Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river."—Cordell Hull.
"We will either find a way, or we will make one."—Hannibal.
"Necessity is the mother of taking chances."—Mark Twain.
"We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there."—Charles F.
Kettering.
"Once more let us stress that the end to be attained in working for the purity of the visible church is loving relationship, first to God and then to our brothers. We must not forget that the final end is not what we are against, but what we are for."—Francis Schaeffer.
"God doesn't always smooth the path, but sometimes He puts springs in the wagon."—Marshall Lucas.
"The gospel must be repeatedly forwarded to a new address because the recipient is repeatedly changing places of residence."—Helmut Thielicke.
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is too dark to read!"—Groucho Marx.
"Most bureaucracies operate on the premise that a Japanese computer did when translating phrases. 'Out of sight, out of mind' reemerged after much datacrunching as 'Invisible, insane.' "— William E. Rapfogel.
"We cannot then take a position that the unity of the church consists in viewing every text of Scripture in the very same light. The church may pass resolution upon resolution to put down all disagreement of opinions, but we cannot force the mind and will, and root out disagreement. These resolutions may conceal the discord, but they cannot quench it and establish perfect agreement Nothing can perfect unity in the church but the spirit of Christlike forbearance."—Ellen White.
