Ben Carson

"My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain. Now all the archaeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big if you stop and think about it. And I don’t think it’d just disappear over the course of time to store that much grain. And when you look at the way that the pyramids are made, with many chambers that are hermetically sealed, they’d have to be that way for a reason. And various scientists have said, “Well, you know there were alien beings that came down and they have special knowledge and that’s how they were”—you know, it doesn’t require an alien being when God is with you."

"So after a while, if people won't accept your excuses, you stop looking for them."

"By believing we are the product of random acts, we eliminate morality and the basis of ethical behavior. For if there is no such thing as moral authority, you can do anything you want. You make everything relative, and there’s no reason for any of our higher values."

"Ultimately, if you accept the evolutionary theory, you dismiss ethics, you don’t have to abide by a set of moral codes, you determine your own conscience based on your own desires. You have no reason for things such as selfless love, when a father dives in to save his son from drowning. You can trash the Bible as irrelevant, just silly fables, since you believe that it does not conform to scientific thought. You can be like Lucifer, who said, “I will make myself like the Most High.”"

"There is no fulfillment in things whatsoever. And I think one of the reasons that depression reigns supreme amongst the rich and famous is some of them thought that maybe those things would bring them happiness. But what, in fact, does is having a cause, having a passion. And that's really what gives life's true meaning."

"I think one of the keys to leadership is recognizing that everybody has gifts and talents. A good leader will learn how to harness those gifts toward the same goal."

"I started reading about people of great accomplishment ... and it dawned on me suddenly that the person who has the most to do with what happens in your life is you."

"There are a group of people who would like to silence everybody and have everyone go along to get along. But that's not going to be very helpful for us in the long run in terms of solving our problems, and someone has to be courageous enough to actually stand up to the bullies."

"I would like people to recognize in looking at my story that the person who has the most to do with what happens to you is you. It's not the environment, it's not the other people who were there trying to help you or trying to stop you. It's what you decide to do and how much effort you put behind it."

"Education is a fundamental principle of what made America a success. We can't afford to throw any young people away."

"You know Obamacare is really I think the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery, and it is in a way, it is slavery in a way, because it is making all of us subservient to the government, and it was never about health care. It was about control."

"Happiness doesn't result from what we get, but from what we give."

"There's only two paragraphs in there about George Washington ... little or nothing about Martin Luther King, a whole section on slavery and how evil we are, a whole section on Japanese internment camps and how we slaughtered millions of Japanese with our bombs... I think most people when they finish that course, they'd be ready to go sign up for ISIS ... We have got to stop this silliness crucifying ourselves."

"Responsible human beings must be concerned about our surroundings and what we will pass on to future generations. However, to use climate change as an excuse not to develop our God-given resources makes little sense."

"I want people to understand that we, the American people, are not each other's enemies. The real enemies are those people who are trying to divide us into every little possible group."

"The reason that [political correctness] is very troubling to me is that it’s the very same thing that happened to the Roman Empire. They were extremely powerful. There was no way anybody could overcome them. But these philosophers, with the long flowing white robes and the long white beards, they could wax eloquently on every subject, but nothing was right and nothing was wrong. They soon completely lost sight of who they were."

"The wonderful thing about a company like Mannatech is that they recognize that when God made us, He gave us the right fuel. And that fuel was the right kind of healthy food. You know we live in a society that is very sophisticated, and sometimes we’re not able to achieve the original diet. And we have to alter our diet to fit our lifestyle. Many of the natural things are not included in our diet. Basically what the company is doing is trying to find a way to restore natural diet as a medicine or as a mechanism for maintaining health."

"Absolutely. Because a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight -- and when they come out, they're gay. So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question."

"I'm probably never going to be politically correct because I'm not a politician. I don't want to be a politician. Because politicians do what is politically expedient — I want to do what's right."

"Of course black lives matter. But instead of people pointing fingers at each other and just creating strife, what we need to be talking about is: How do we solve problems in the black community? ... Whether I get the votes or not, I want people to start listening to what I am saying and understanding that ... there is a way to go that will lead to upward mobility as opposed to dependency."

"I find the big bang, really quite fascinating. I mean, here you have all these highfalutin scientists and they’re saying it was this gigantic explosion and everything came into perfect order."

"I personally believe that this theory that Darwin came up with was something that was encouraged by the adversary, and it has become what is scientifically, politically correct."

"I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed... I'm telling you there is a reason these dictatorial people take the guns first."

"I want people to see me as an honest person, a person who is actually willing to express what they believe. The way I look at it, if people don't like that, I'd rather not be in office. I don't want to be in office under false pretenses, just saying things people want to hear so I can get elected."

"I actually have something I would use the Department of Education to do. It would be to monitor our institutions of higher education for extreme political bias and deny federal funding if it exists."

"We'd be Cuba if there were no Fox News."

"We need to be thinking about: How do we allow people to ascend the ladder of opportunity, rather than how do we give them everything and keep them dependent."

"We've been conditioned to think that only politicians can solve our problems. But at some point, maybe we will wake up and recognize that it was the politicians who created our problems."

"Maybe that's how I learned to handle my deep hurt—by forgetting."

"Abraham Lincoln once said, "All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my mother." I'm not sure I want to say it quite like that, but my mother, Sonya Carson, was the earliest, strongest, and most impacting force in my life. It would be impossible to tell about my accomplishments without starting with my mother's influence."

"She was not a person who would allow the system to dictate her life."

"You've promised that if we come to You and ask something in faith, that You'll do it."

"Why should I give someone else such power over my life?"

"Jesus Is All the World to Me."

"I have sunshine in my heart regardless of conditions around me."

"You have yourself to blame."

"We create our own destiny by the way we do things. We have to take advantage of opportunities and be responsible for our choices."

"It wasn't that I had to be first in everything, but I should have been number one."

"Stop thinking about failing."

"You have to try, you have to do everything you can."

"We don't necessarily have to play by the strict rules if we can find a way that works better, as long as it's reasonable and doesn't hurt anybody."

"Someone told me that creativity is just learning to do something with a different perspective."

"The kind of job doesn't matter. The length of time on the job doesn't matter... If you work hard and do your best, you'll be recognized and move onward."

"I don't believe in one-person productions. Everyone on the team is important and needs to know that he or she is vital."

"I can provide one living example of someone who made it and who came from what we now call a disadvantaged background: me."

"Carol James, who is my physician's assistant and my right-hand person, frequently teases me by saying, "It's because women need only half of their brain to think as well as men. That's why you can do this operation on so many women.""

"It's all in God's hands."

"I always pray before any of the operations."

"We are capable of doing even better things than we believe we are, if we challenge each other to do it."

"To THINK BIG and to use our talents doesn't mean we won't have difficulties along the way. We will—we all do. How we view those problems determines how we end up. If we choose to see the obstacles in our path as barriers, we stop trying. “We can't win,” we moan. “They won't let us win.”However, if we choose to see the obstacles as hurdles, we can leap over them. Successful people don't have fewer problems. They have determined that nothing will stop them from going forward.Whatever direction we choose, if we can realize that every hurdle we jump strengthens and prepares us for the next one, we're already on the way to success."

"This is a book about giving our best and especially about doing whatever we can to help others."

"One of the great truths of life: I did not do it alone. I had help along the way."

"I need the Lord's guidance on what to do... I asked God for wisdom."

"Reading is the way out of ignorance, and the road to achievement."

""You do your best, we do the rest." That fit the way I felt about God. I was going to give God my best and then it was up to God to do the rest."

"You pray for yourselves and just ask God to guide you and to give you strength."

"Nobody can hinder you from doing what you want, if that's what you set your mind to. You can always find a hook to hang excuses on, but they're only excuses. You don't have anyone to blame but yourself. Nobody else makes you fail."

"God loves us all, and all of us are equal in God's sight."

"My mentors are those individuals who saw potential in me long before I perceived it in myself – or who challenged me to do more – the people who helped guide me toward excellence."

"Because they believed in my ability , I was able to believe in it as well."

"Do not underestimate the importance of feeling special."

"I thank God for all the people whom God sent into my life, the people who gave their best so that I could learn to give my best."

"The outstanding doctor constantly emphasized the humanitarian aspect of medical care."

"We have no time for excuses."

"If we know human anatomy and we are reasonably intelligent, he assumes that we can figure out how to do almost anything."

"Be nice to people – all people – even when you don't have to be. Everybody is important."

"Give your best. Settle for nothing less than doing your best for yourself and for others."

"Always give your best and try to figure out how to do an even better job."

"Not everyone has to be a high-powered neurosurgeon to add significantly to the equation that brings about success here."

"Occasionally I talk with people who see doctors as people who do nothing but give of themselves and never receive from anyone else – especially not from their patients. That is totally false. The longer I remain in my profession, the more I realize how much I receive from those who come to me for help."

"Only God knows the beginning and the end."

"We don't have to explain miracles; all we have to do is accept them."

"When we have done our best, we also have to learn that we still need to rely on God. Our best – no matter how good – is incomplete if we leave God out of the picture."

"When I don't have an answer, I pray. God is the only alternative source of help."

"Thanks, God, for honoring our best by giving us a miracle."

"Use PMA: Positive Mental Attitude."

"You are what you think."

"If we allow ourselves to dwell on negatives, on hurts, on mistreatments, we will be negative thinkers. So be open to positive thinking, THINK BIG!"

"THINK BIG means opening our horizons, reaching for new possibilities in our lives, being open to whatever God has in store for us on the road ahead. T=TALENT : If you recognize your talents, use them appropriately, and choose a field that uses those talents, you will rise to the top of your field. H=HONEST : If we live by the rule of honesty and accept our problems, we can go far down the road of achievement. I=INSIGHT : If we observe and reflect and commit ourselves to giving our best, we will come out on top. N=NICE : If we are nice to others, other respond to us in the same way, and we can give our best for each other. K=KNOWLEDGE : If we make every attempt to increase our knowledge in order to use it for human go, it will make a difference in us and in our world. B=BOOKS : If we commit ourselves to reading thus increasing our knowledge, only God limits how far we can go in this world. I=IN-DEPTH LEARNING : If we develop in-depth knowledge, it will enable us to give our best to others and help to make a better world. G=GOD : If we acknowledge our need for God , he will help us."

"God has given to every one of us more than fourteen billion cells and connections in our brain. Now why would God give us such a complex organ system unless He expects us to use it?"

"It is not a matter of competing with someone else. Essentially, it is accepting our own special abilities as special – and then developing them."

"Anyone with a normal brain has the capacity to do almost anything, but when one has special gifts or talents (and everyone has) and takes advantage of and develops these talents – that person is likely to excel."

"What a wonderful thing is to be able to contribute to the restoration of someone's health. It's not only a feeling that I'm worth something, but that I have something to contribute."

"I'm convinced that we all harvest the fruits of our labors."

"Although we all make mistakes in life, the problems occur when we try to hide our mistakes, to cover them up rather than to learn from them and allow other people to learn from them."

"It is not where we have come from but where we are going that counts!"

"Be nice to every-body. You meet the same people going up as you meet going down."

"Not prejudge others – not decide their value before knowing them."

"God don't make no junk."

"Being nice always comes back to repay us in the long run."

"Not only we can say that we cannot overload our brain, but we also know that our brain retains everything. The difficulty does not come with the input of information, but in getting it out."

"Knowledge makes people special. Knowledge enriches life itself."

"You never know how useful even seemingly insignificant knowledge can be."

"Knowledge make us valuable. When we have knowledge that other people do not readily have, somebody need us. It does not matter what we look like, or where we came from, if we have something that others have a need for."

"Knowledge is the key that unlocks all the doors. You can be green-skinned with yellow polka dots and come from Mars, but if you have knowledge that people need, instead of beating you, they'll beat a path to your door."

"The mind, once stretched by an idea, never returns to its original dimension."

"In-depth learning means learning as much about a topic as possible – learning for the sake of knowledge and understanding itself as opposed to learning for the sake of passing a test with high grades or trying to impress people."

"We cannot allow ourselves to be prejudiced against a subject, based upon what someone else has said or just upon the difficulty we encounter in learning."

"It is important to call on God to intervene in our life, especially when we reach the point where we ourselves have become helpless."

"As I continue to develop my relationship with Him, I have discovered that God is a nice guy."

"Do your best and let God do the rest."

"What is important – what I consider success – is that we make a contribution to our world."

"We are still able to grow as long as we are alive."

"We do not have to compare our achievements with those of others. We need only to ask ourselves one question: Have I given my best?"

"“Why risk?” I responded. “It should be, why not to risk?”"

"In our culture, security has become an obsession."

"I've never known a case yet where worry helped."

"So I'm going to say my prayers tonight before I go to sleep. I hope you'll do the same. I believe if we do that, we'll all have less to worry about tomorrow."

"God would grant all of us wisdom, calm, and peace, that his presence would be in the operating room, and that his will might be done."

"If things do go badly, will I wonder for the rest of my life what I might have done to help?"

"Whenever I face a hard decision or a risky situation in life (personally or professionally), all my thinking, all my analysis, all my planning can be boiled down to four simple questions: 1. What is the best thing that can happen if I do this? 2. What is the worst thing that can happen if I do this? 3. What is the best thing that can happen if I don't do it? 4. What is the worst thing that can happen if I don't do it?"

"After all my thinking and praying, my decision came down to the fact that I felt obligated to do everything I could to help."

"I now had enough faith not only to believe there were answer, but to feel certain that those answers would become apparent at some point in the future."

"I was confident that something good would come out of yet another difficult and disappointing case."

"It's a failure only if you don't get anything out of it, Thomas Edison said he knew 999 ways that a light bulb did not work; yet we have lights today."

"But no matter what safety steps we take or what security precautions we adopt, our risk of death is not approximately – but exactly – 100 percent. There is no margin of error on the statistic."

"Say your prayers. And I'll say mine. Because I really think it helps."

"If someone in going to die anyway without an operation, then you have nothing to lose by trying."

"How did we become so intrigued by risk – and so worried about it at the same time?"

"Like an adventure who was asked why he climbed the mountain and answered, “Because it's there!” I think our culture has developed this intense love-hate relationship with risk, in part because it's always there."

"The truth is that everything is risky; life itself is risky."

"Rather than reacting to every risk we hear and see, we should make an effort to discern which ones we can do something about."

"The more we think about risk, the more risk seem to be."

"Surrendering to fear and allowing ourselves to be paralyzed by peril isn't something most of us can afford to do."

"The greatest and most valuable resources we have for making crucial decision are knowledge and the amazing brainpower God gave human beings when he created us. That's certainly true for deciding our best response to any risk we ever face."

"Odds that you will die at some point in your life: 1 in 1. Thus, you might say the greatest, most significant, and universal risk factor in death is being born. This implies that it really isn't very helpful to approach the subject of risk by focusing on how we might die; rather, it's far wise to consider how we should live and what risk we will live with."

"Risk played a really important role in making me the person I am."

"Every human being experiences risks; some of the risks are common to all humans, and some are unique to the life each of us has been given to live. But I know for certain that risk – both it's shadow and its reality – has shaped my life inside and out."

"We'll always be safe in Jesus Christ if we place our faith in the Lord."

"You can sense their anger before they even say a word."

"The Bible is a seemingly inexhaustible source of practical wisdom that could serve as a valuable resource for everyday living."

"I learned that with great responsibility often come great honor and opportunity."

"Once in a while, when it comes to taking risks, youthful naivete pays better dividends than do knowledge and experience."

"I sensed I was about to take one of the most important risks of my life. But I felt so right that I didn't hesitate."

"That learning process has been likened to the challenge of having someone open a fire hydrant and expect you to swallow it all."

"Often the willingness to think differently about a problem and then risk sharing the idea with others certainly pay off."

"My experience has confirmed the wisdom of so much of what the Bible teaches."

"If your priority is to look good in front of people, your life will take a different direction than if your priority is to use the talents that God has given you to make a positive difference in the world."

"If we set our priority “the removal of all risk”, we'll soon have sterile, stagnant, and unstimulating learning environments."

"Faith, by definition, is a risk."

"Evolution and creationism both require faith."

"Evolutionism is to think that a hurricane blowing through a junkyard could somehow assemble a fully equipped and flight-ready 747."

"I believe we have this enormous brains with the ability to process so much information for a purpose – because we were made in God's image, not in the image of an amoeba."

"I am sensitive to the fact that other people may have different beliefs."

"I believe God has a specific purpose for me – and for every other person to whom he gives the gift of life."

"I don't consider myself a “religious” person at all. I am, however, a person of enormous faith."

"We can see God's reflection in everything he created."

"If there is a God and you believe in him, you know the best is yet to come."

"I realized my obligations to others should be greater than my obligations to myself."

"Creativity requires risk. So do exploration and innovation. Anyone who thinks outside of the box is taking a risk. Leadership brings many risk. Courage is exercised in the face of risk. Invest involve risk. Decision-making always mean a certain degree of risk."

"True greatness isn't so much what you do as who you are."

"God doesn't make mistakes. So if I'm supposed to die, there's a very good reason for it. I'm not going to question him. I'm just going to enjoy all these beautiful things that God created."

"The point is, we can decry the dangers we face or ignore them or even allow ourselves to be paralyzed by fear."

"Every time I open a child's head and see a brain, I marvel at the mystery: This is what makes every one of us who we are. This is what hold all our memories, all our thoughts, all our dreams. This is what makes us different from each other in millions of ways."

"Do you have a brain? Then use it. It's all you need to overcome any problem. That's the secret. That's my simple but powerful prescription for life, love, and success in a dangerous world."

"God has opened many doors of opportunity throughout my lifetime, but I believe the greatest of those doors was allowing me to be born in the United States of America."

"The PC police are out in force at all times. ... We've reached the point where people are afraid to actually talk about what they want to say."

"When someone is being particularly mean and nasty, I simply think to myself, He or she used to be a cute little baby, I wonder what happened?"

"Now we know for sure that education is no hedge against mindblowing irrational thinking. Our proof? None other than Dr. Ben Carson, highly trained pediatric neurosurgeon, man of science, leading GOP presidential contender and batsh*t crazy Bible-thumper in the first degree."

"Nobody has been able to sit down with him and have him get one iota of intelligent information about the Middle East."

"... for a very senior eminent distinguished doctor as he is to say that [evolution is false] is even worse. Because of course, evolution is the bedrock of biology and biology is the bedrock of medicine. He clearly doesn't understand the fundamental theorem of his own subject. That is a terrible indictment."

"Crass isn't really the right word for it. Ignorant, offensive, and downright stupid would also fit the bill. I'm talking about the opinions of US Republican Presidential hopeful Ben Carson regarding gun laws and the dreadful fate of European Jewry in the Holocaust."

"By associating the Biblical Joseph with the Egyptian pyramids, he is imposing a Judeo-Christian narrative on a landscape now occupied by Muslims."

"Donald Trump, for all of his bluster, is at least authentically stupid... All these other guys are clown posers. Trump is the genuine article. And, God help me, I think I’d rather have him sitting in the Oval Office, getting stupidly out-maneuvered by the politicians under him, than bringing in a guy like Carson who is willing to shred every last bit of his intellectual credibility in order to lord over a citizenry he doesn’t seem to have much respect for."

"If neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson really believes that somebody with zero governing experience is qualified to be president, he must first let someone with zero medical training operate on his brain."

"The Carson conundrum is not fully captured by a list of his eccentric beliefs, however. He also confounds the traditional demographics of US politics, in which national African American political figures are meant to be Democrats. Not only is Carson a Republican – he is a strong conservative on both social and economic issues, opposing abortion including in cases of rape and incest, and framing welfare programs as a scheme to breed dependence and win votes. He has visited the riot zones of Ferguson and Baltimore but offered little compassion for black urban poor populations who feel oppressed by mostly white police forces. Even Carson’s core appeal as a Christian evangelical is complicated by the fact that he is a lifelong adherent to a relatively small sect, the Seventh-Day Adventist church, whose celebration of the sabbath on Saturday instead of Sunday and denial of the doctrine of hell have drawn accusations of heresy from other mainstream Christian groups."

"In his books, [Carson] often mentions incidents in which God intervened in his life. When he neglected to study at Yale, God showed him the answers on a chemistry exam. When he fell asleep while driving home one night, God spared his life. When he used new surgical techniques on children's brains, God saved some of his patients. And when he was on a safari in Africa, God answered his prayer for plenty of photogenic wildlife. Now that he's running for president, Carson sounds as if he's counting on divine intervention to pull him through again."

"How does Carson plan, as president, to command the respect, much less the actions, of uniformed service members when it appears a healthy portion of his biography is utterly fabricated? ... The bigger problem here, though, is one I mentioned earlier. You don’t have to be a soldier or be issued an Army Values card to understand that integrity is an important virtue, particularly for someone who is planning to run our country and lead the free world."

"Republicans who encounter Black Lives Matter protesters should resist the temptation to go Chris Christie on them. Instead, they should follow the lead of Ben Carson and use the protests as an opportunity to point out that the Democratic policies of the Obama era are failing our most vulnerable citizens. Carson didn’t wait for the protesters to come to him. He took his campaign to Harlem last week to make the case that the GOP has better solutions for the challenges of poverty, dependency and lack of mobility... That is precisely the message every Republican candidate should be delivering. When confronted by Black Lives Matter protesters, Republicans should declare that they fully agree — black lives do matter — but that the policies of the past seven years have not made black lives better. They should point out that the African American youth unemployment rate in July 2015 was 31 percent — more than double that of whites, at 14.4 percent. To put that figure in perspective, in 1932 — the very worst point of the Great Depression — the national unemployment rate was 22.9 percent. So for young black men and women today, the employment rates of the Great Depression would be a step up from those of the Obama 'recovery'."

"Mr. Carson’s argument, which he made in his new book “A More Perfect Union” and was asked to defend last week, is strangely ahistorical, a classic instance of injecting an issue that is important in our place and time into a historical situation where it was not seen as important. I can think of no serious work of scholarship on the Nazi dictatorship or on the causes of the Holocaust in which Nazi gun control measures feature as a significant factor. Neither does gun control figure in the collective historical memory of any group that was targeted by the Nazi regime, be they Jews, Gypsies, the disabled, gay people or Poles. It is simply a nonissue... Mr. Carson’s remarks not only trivialize the predicament in which Jews found themselves in Germany and elsewhere in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. They also trivialize the serious, prolonged and admirable efforts undertaken by many Germans to work through the causes of their country’s catastrophic mistakes of that period."