Ben Carson
People all over the nation are starved for honesty and common sense.
A lot of people simply don't realize their potential because they're just so risk adverse. They just don't want to take the risk.
Intelligent people tend to talk about the facts. They don't sit around and call each other names. That's what you can find on a third grade playground.
But, you know, we have these entrenched entities - and I'm talking about both Republicans and Democrats - who believe that when you're elected to office, you become some kind of member of the aristocracy, and that anyone who challenges you is attacking you and is unpatriotic. This is foolishness.
I have this feeling that as time goes on, we're not getting any more civilized, and we should be. We're still running around like the days of Genghis Khan. There are so many important, better things to do and we need to encourage people to reach into the brighter side of humanity and not encourage people to continue to glorify the darker side.
You can understand why I'm a believer. I have seen miracles.
Before this country came on the scene, for thousands of years people did things the same way. Within 200 years of the advent of this nation, men were walking on the moon, and I want us to recognize this is the kind of people that we are. We're creative with a lot of ingenuity and a lot of energy.
There is a tendency of people to try to make you believe only a few people are smart. As a brain surgeon, I know better than that.
I was definitely an at-risk kid growing up.
What we have to stop and think about is that we have weakened ourselves militarily to such an extent that it affects all of our military policies.
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.
I could easily have decided that life was cruel, that being black meant everything was stacked against me.
Resist this war on God, freedom of religion and freedom of speech.
There is no one that we can afford to throw away.
There's a certain spiritual nature and something of the mind that we can't measure. We can't find it. With all our sophisticated equipment, we cannot monitor or define it, and yet it's there.
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.
One of the reasons surgeons have so much trouble separating Siamese twins is that nobody gets to do many of them. On the table, the anatomy is so different from normal, that you're constantly trying to figure out, 'Can I cut this? Does this wire lead to what?' It's like trying to defuse a bomb.
If God thinks proportionality is fair who are we to say that it is unfair?
What we need to do in this PC world is forget about unanimity of speech and unanimity of thought and we need to concentrate on being respectful of those people with whom we disagree.
Every time I am looking into the depths of somebody's brain, I'm thinking, 'This is what makes a person who they are. That structure contains memories. Everything that they've ever experienced is right in there.'
Our children need to see and hear about more black role models in many fields so they can make better choices.
You're going to be much less likely to point the finger at somebody and create a huge brouhaha when it wasn't necessary if you had stopped and asked yourself, 'Could I have done things to prevent this situation?'
If you go and talk to most people, they mean well but they don't have much of a breadth on education, of knowledge of understanding what the real issues are and therefore they listen to pundits on television who tell them what they are supposed to think and they keep repeating that until pretty soon they say, 'Oh, well that must be true.'
You know, I'm a physician. I like to diagnose things. And, you know, I've diagnosed some pretty, pretty significant issues that I think a lot of people resonate with.
There's absolutely no reason at all that physicians, scientists, shouldn't be involved in things that affect all of us.
You know, many people have said that I'm on the edge and I'm maverick for some of the big operations that I've done. I'm not at all. I pray; I ask God to give me wisdom, 'Should I do it?', guidance in terms of how to do it, who to consult with. All those kind of things are incredibly important.
Kids have what I call a built-in hypocrisy antenna that comes up and blocks out what you're saying when you're being a hypocrite.
Well, I say that the most important job you can possibly have is raising a child, and it needs to be treated that way. You have to show them, rather than just talk to them.
I want the government to provide the military so we don't get invaded by somebody and destroyed. I want the government to provide the roads so I can get from point A to B. In terms of taking care of my day to day needs, I want to do that myself. I want my community to do that.
The P.C. police are out in force at all times... We've reached a point where people are actually afraid to talk about what they want to say.
Illogical thinkers throw names and slurs around because they have no arguments with which to rebut their opponents. Rational people have to keep hammering their points home.
Our schools too often want to shut people up so they can't talk about real solutions. People who think differently tend to clam up because they think something is wrong with their ideas.
The key is to cut out the middleman and empower both doctor and patient with information about what things cost.
Here's a nation, one of the founding pillars was freedom of speech and freedom of expression. And yet, we have imposed upon people restrictions on what they can say, on what they can think. And the media is the largest proponent of this, crucifying people who say things really quite innocently.
I actually don't think that I'm that much smarter than anybody else. It's just that I frequently just seem to know what to do, and I think that's wisdom.
I believe that things are always going to work out, even if in the beginning it doesn't look like they are working out. I know in the long run they are going to work out, and it's going to be fine.
In my own personal life, God plays a great role in the risk, because I pray before I go into the operating room for every case, and I ask him to give me wisdom, to help me to know what to do - and not only for operating, but for everything.
It's very important for people to know themselves and understand what their value system is, because if you don't know what your value system is, then you don't know what risks are worth taking and which ones are worth avoiding.
Don't let anyone turn you into a slave. You're a slave if you let the media tell you that sports and entertainment are more important than developing your brain.
I would prefer to just continue to speak about truth and to speak about what makes sense.
I don't want my kids to grow up with no father like I did. I came to the conclusion a while ago that you can work until midnight and not be finished or you can work until 6 or 7 and not be finished. I decided I'd rather work until 6 or 7.
When I entered high school I was an A-student, but not for long. I wanted the fancy clothes. I wanted to hang out with the guys. I went from being an A-student to a B-student to a C-student, but I didn't care. I was getting the high fives and the low fives and the pats on the back. I was cool.
You need an incredible amount of self-confidence to go digging around in someone's brain.
With everything that is complex, we learn. If you don't learn, then it's an utter and abject failure. If you do learn, and you're able to apply that to the next situation, then you take away a measure of success.
Well, when did this become a monarchy? You know, we are the people. The president works for us and, you know, we need to remember that.
Economics is not brain surgery.
Health care is one-sixth of our economy. If the government can control that, they can control just about everything. We need to understand what is going on, because there are much more economic models that can be used to give us good health care than what we have now.
My thoughts are that marriage is between a man and a woman.
Corporations are not in business to be social-welfare organizations; they are there to make money.