Daily Inspiration Quote by Charles R. Swindoll

Swindoll’s line wears the comforting simplicity of a sermon that wants to travel well beyond the pews: excellence isn’t primarily a resume item or a social advantage, it’s an interior discipline. The intent is pastoral and practical. He’s offering a lever you can actually pull - not “fix the world,” but “tend your mind.” For a clergyman who has spent decades translating faith into daily practice, that’s strategic: it relocates the battleground from vague moral aspiration to the minute-by-minute traffic of attention, habit, and desire.

The subtext is a fusion of biblical renewal language with late-20th-century self-help confidence. “Thinking thoughts of excellence” echoes a Protestant emphasis on sanctification (the slow shaping of character) while borrowing the cadence of motivational psychology. The word “merely” does heavy rhetorical work: it lowers the intimidation level, implying that greatness is accessible, even ordinary, if you adopt the right mental diet. That invitation is also a subtle rebuke. If your life feels cramped, the problem may be what you’ve been feeding your mind.

“Programming our minds” places the quote in its era. A minister reaching for computer metaphors signals modernity, but it also smuggles in an assumption: people can be rewritten like software. That’s liberating and contentious. It dignifies agency (“set us free”) while downplaying structural limits, trauma, or material constraint. Still, the phrase “information that will set us free” cleverly reframes spiritual formation as media hygiene: choose inputs that widen your soul rather than shrink it. In a culture of constant distraction, it lands as both counsel and critique.