“Prayer precedes power” (Dwight L. Moody from sermon “The Prayers of the Bible”).

“Our research shows that these types of nonhuman changes failed [i.e. team restructuring, tweaking a performance management system, etc.] more often than they succeed. That’s because the real problem never was in the process, system, or structure–it was in employee behavior. The key to real change lies not in implementing a new process, but in getting people to hold one another accountable to the process. And that requires Crucial Conversations skills” (Patterson, Grenny, McMillan & Switlzer, Crucial Conversations, 13).

“The Apostle James tells us that the prophet Elijah was a man ‘subject to like passions as we are.’ I am thankful that those men and women who were so mighty in prayer were just like us” (Dwight L. Moody from sermon “The Prayers of the Bible”).

As image-bearer of God, man possesses the possibility both to create something beautiful, and to delight in it.
     — Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism

“People who routinely hold crucial conversations and hole them well are able to express controversial and even risky opinions in a way that gets heard. Their bosses, peers, and direct reports listen without becoming defensive or angry” (Patterson, Grenny, McMillan & Switlzer, Crucial Conversations, 10).

“Literature is a form of knowledge, but it is also an art form–the creation of technique and beauty for the sake of entertainment and aesthetic delight” (Leland Ryken, Thinking Christianly About Literature from The Christian Imagination, 25).

“Like a woman who cannot be a little pregnant, an argument cannot be partly valid or invalid but must be completely one or the other” (Louis P. Pojman, Philosophy, 15).

“Our research has shown that strong relationships, careers, organizations, and communities all draw from the same source of power–the ability to talk openly about high-stakes, emotional, controversial topics” (Patterson, Grenny, McMillan & Switlzer, Crucial Conversations, 9).

“Literature takes reality and human experience as its starting point, transforms it by means of the imagination, and sends readers back to life with renewed understanding of it and zest for it because of their excursions into a purely imaginary realm” (Leland Ryken, Thinking Christianly About Literature from The Christian Imagination, 24).

“When conversations turn from routine to crucial, we’re often in trouble. . . . Two tiny organs seated neatly atop your kidneys pump adrenaline into your bloodstream. You don’t choose to do this. Your adrenal glands do it, and then you have to live with it. . . . The issue at hand, the other person, and a brain that’s drunk on adrenaline and almost incapable of rational thought. It’s little wonder that we often say and do things that make perfect sense in the moment, but later on seem, well, stupid” (Patterson, Grenny, McMillan & Switlzer, Crucial Conversations, 5).