Quotes about Inspiration

Put the Protestant flint and the Catholic steel together, and you will kindle a fire that will burn all around the world.

When the good Lord put a burden on his heart, he listened.

I want to see, real, living, and in the hours of my own days, that glory I create as an illusion! I want it real! I want to know that there is someone, somewhere, who wants it, too! Or else what is the use of seeing it, and working, and burning oneself for an impossible vision? A spirit, too, needs fuel. It can run dry.

I and they, my chosen friends, my fellow-builders, shall write the firsts chapter in the new history of man

All work is an act of creating and comes from the same source: from an inviolate capacity to see through one's own eyes—which means: the capacity to perform a rational identification -which means: the capacity to see, to connect and to make what had not been seen, connected and made before.

It's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

That's what the leadership was teaching me, day by day: that the self-interest I was supposed to be looking for extended well beyond the immediacy of issues, that beneath the small talk and sketchy biographies and received opinions, people carried with them some central explanation of themselves. Stories full of terror and wonder, studded with events that still haunted or inspired them. Sacred stories.

I recalled a sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called "The Drum Major Instinct." In it, he talks about how, deep down, we all want to be first, celebrated for our greatness; we all want "to lead the parade." He goes on to point out that such selfish impulses can be reconciled by aligning that quest for greatness with more selfless aims. You can strive to be first in service, first in love.

We are a people of improbable hope.

You have the ability and gifts to do whatever you want. It is your turn now to change the world. Yes we can!

O, fly and never tire, Fly and never tire, Fly and never tire, There's a great camp-meeting in the Promised Land. —FROM AN AFRICAN AMERICAN SPIRITUAL

And so the moment we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold into a library, we've changed their lives forever, and for the better. This is an enormous force for good.