African Americans

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

"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?"

"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."

"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!"

"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."

"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'."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"... 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."

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

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

"Evolution and creationism both require faith."

"Faith, by definition, is a risk."

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

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

"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."