I’ve been preoccupied with a lot of work that really needs to be done and that really takes a lot of time. I haven’t blogged faithfully – to my readers or my Savior – for a while, and I truly apologize.

While I’ll be taking a break this next week or so, in an attempt to figure out whether I am old enough to be dreaming dreams or still young enough to see visions, please enjoy these rather random quotes I’ve enjoyed finding on that subject. (Most – except for the last one – are favorites of Carl Townsend, founder of Strategic Resources Ministry.)

For the revelation [vision] awaits an appointed time, it speaks [as to kindle a fire] of the end. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.
Habakkuk 2:3 NIV

What could be worse than being born without sight? Being born with sight and no vision.
Hellen Keller

If your vision is for a year, plant wheat. If your vision is for a decade, plant trees. If your vision is for a lifetime, plant people.
Chinese Proverb

Individuals and churches that are content to operate solely on the basis of their mission in life generally flounder because their perspective is too broad, too ill-defined. Those that focus on their vision as marching orders have a much higher chance of success because they establish more realistic priorities and because they are more likely to be people-centered.
George Barna

For reasons I do not fully understand, some power is released through setting positive goals that would otherwise remain dormant.
C. Peter Wagner

Soon after the completion of Disney World someone said, “Isn’t it too bad that Walt Disney didn’t live to see this!” Mike Vance, creative director of Disney Studios replied. “He did see it – that’s why it’s here.”

The future does not belong to those who are content with today. Rather, it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason, and courage in a personal commitment.
Robert Kennedy

Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.
Proverbs 29:18

Not much happens without a dream. And for something great to happen, there must be a great dream. Behind every great achievement is a dreamer of great dreams.
Robert Greenleaf

I think there is a world market for about five computers.
Thomas Watson, 1950s president of IBM

If you stay committed, your dreams can come true. I left home at 17 and had nothing but rejections for 25 years. I wrote more than 20 screen plays.
Michael Blake (Academy Award-winning screenwriter of Dances With Wolves)

If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out they would have had opportunity to return. But as it was, they desired a better country.
Hebrews 11:15

Men and women do not possess visions of the future. They are possessed by them.
Robert Bundy

And the Lord said to me, “Write my vision on a billboard, large and clear, so that anyone can read it while running and rush to tell others.”
Habakkuk 2:2b

The absolute goal of vision for ministry is to glorify God.
George Barna

In Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Alice gets to a fork in the road and she asks the cat. “Which way do I go?” “Where are you going?,” asks the cat. “I don’t know.” “Then it really doesn’t make any difference,” replies the cat.

The Church is, by definition, open to all. A vision statement always focuses, and therefore excludes. There will always, then, be some fallout. Some people will always react to forming a vision statement because of the exclusion sense.
True visionaries are never lukewarm.
George Barna

The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created – created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths to it are not found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.
John Schaar

Tell me what your vision of the future and I will tell you what you are.
Frederick L. Polak

The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created – created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths to it are not found but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and destination.
John Schaar

Not much happens without a dream. And for something great to happen, there must be a great dream. Behind every great achievement is a dreamer of great dreams.
Robert Greenleaf

It all comes from the mind. I’ve seen the most incredible success stories – because a person had a dream and it was so powerful no one could touch it. He’d feel it, believe it, think about it all day and night. That would inspire him to do things necessary to get the results he wanted.
Arnold Schwarzenegger

The pilot light is out on my flame of ambition.
Winnie the Pooh

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
Winston Churchill

Some of the world’s greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible.
Doug Larson (Far Side cartoonist)

God does not place timetables on how quickly He expects us to capture his vision. In fact, He may take more pleasure in our attempt to know His mind than in our eventual ability to capture that insight. The key is that we develop a life-style characterized by the vision-capturing process- that is a life in which He is preeminent, in which our desires are to know and please Him and our activities center around our relationship with Him.”
George Barna

The major credit I think Jim and I deserve is for selecting the right problem and sticking to it. It’s true that by blundering about we stumbled on gold, but the fact remains that we were looking for gold.
Francis Crick (co-proposer of the double-helix structure of DNA)

People will never attain what they cannot see themselves doing.
Karen Ford

That which holds our attention determines our action.
William James, Psychologist

Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray
Henry David Thoreau

People need BHAGs – big hairy audacious goals.
Jim Collins, Jerry Porras (co-authors of Built to Last : Successful Habits of Visionary Companies)

I have never been disabled in my dreams.
Christopher Reeve

The future belongs to those who believe in their dream.
Eleanor Roosevelt

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision.
Theodore Hesburgh

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
Carl Jung

Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say “Why not?”
Robert Kennedy

I would be delighted with my trifocals if one pair of lenses simply let me see the world clearly; the second let me see the world as others see it; and the third let me see it as God does.
Keith Brenton