Vance Havner Quotes

President Lincoln was trying to convince some people, he used some arguments, convincing other people, he used other arguments. That was a great - I thought a great display of presidential leadership.

I write all my sermons.

You have to maintain your principles but have a broader appeal.

My family claims I think I'm always right, although I'm always willing to be proven wrong. I hold my opinions dearly, but you can always try to convince me differently, and if you do, I will hold that opinion dearly. I am decidedly stubborn and have been described as not having a type-A personality, but a quadruple-A personality.

I love going to black churches, and I love some of these black preachers. The best preacher I ever saw in my life was a 93-year-old in a black church in Hamilton, Virginia. What a preacher!

I've learned that in order to achieve what I wanted, it made more sense to negotiate than to defend the autonomy of my work by pounding my fist on the table.

I'm a compromiser and a maneuverer. I try to get something. That's the way our system works.

A diplomat should be yielding and supple as a liana that can be bent but not broken

My determination is not to remain stubbornly with my ideas, but I'll leave them and go over to others as soon as I am shown plausible reasons which I can grasp.

I'm going to be a guy who can defend a bunch of different positions.

People can be sensitive, so if I need to, I'll suck it up and be more flowery. I'll do what it takes to get the outcome I want. As I like to say, sometimes you have to crouch to conquer.

I am extremely malleable as an actor, but I also know how to get away with doing things the way I want, even if the director disagrees.

Yes, I have a philosophy, and you have to come with good arguments to change that philosophy, but, if someone has a better argument than me, then I will change.

The best evidence of a mind is when you change it

I'd prefer to be right than consistent.

I like televangelism shows. I find it entertaining sometimes to see how a young person would deliver the word versus a old person.

IF YOUR OPPONENT strikes with fire, counter with water, becoming completely fluid and free-flowing. Water, by its nature, never collides with or breaks against anything. On the contrary, it swallows up any attack harmlessly.

I would have every minister of the gospel address his audience with the zeal of a friend, with the generous energy of a father, and with the exuberant affection of a mother.

Being yielded to God's authority keeps us pliable and open-minded to a possible change of plans.

Among provocative, the next best thing to good preaching is bad preaching.

Mahomet made the people believe that he would call a hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers for the observers of his law. The people assembled: Mahomet called the hill to come to him again and again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, 'If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill.'

I am a fairly go-with-the-flow guy. Don't get me wrong, I have convictions.

You need to plan the way a fire department plans: it cannot anticipate where the next fire will be, so it has to shape an energetic and efficient team that is capable of responding to the unanticipated as well as to any ordinary event.

One of the tests that I frequently use in an interaction is I push on the idea and what I'm looking for is both flexibility & persistence.

Our inward power, when it obeys nature, reacts to events by accommodating itself to what it faces - to what is possible. It needs no specific material. It pursues its own aims as circumstances allow; it turns obstacles into fuel. As a fire overwhelms what would have quenched a lamp. What's thrown on top of the conflagration is absorbed, consumed by it - and makes it burn still higher.