Regardless of your denomination (or lackthereof), prayer can be a powerful tool. For a refreshing, non-religious look on prayer, please check out this wonderful article by Sally Kemptom on prayer.

And take a look at these quotes on prayer throughout history:

Some people pray just to pray and some people pray to know God. –Andrew Murray

There is a mighty lot of difference between saying prayers and praying. –John G. Lake

You may pray for an hour and still not pray. You may meet God for a moment and then be in touch with Him all day. –Fredrik Wisloff

I have so much to do that I spend several hours in prayer before I am able to do it.—John Wesley

I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had absolutely no other place to go. — Abraham Lincoln

Always respond to every impulse to pray. The impulse to pray may come when you are reading or when you are battling with a text. I would make an absolute law of this – always obey such an impulse. –Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Wishing will never be a substitute for prayer. –Ed Cole

One can believe intellectually in the efficacy of prayer and never do any praying. –Catherine Marshall

Is prayer your steering wheel or your spare tire?– Corrie Ten Boom

The only way to Heaven is prayer; a prayer of the heart, which every one is capable of, and not of reasonings which are the fruits of study, or exercise of the imagination, which, in filling the mind with wandering objects, rarely settle it; instead of warming the heart with love to God, they leave it cold and languishing. –Jeanne Guyon

We must alter our lives in order to alter our hearts, for it is impossible to live one way and pray another. –William Law

When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don’t pray, they don’t. –William Temple

Do you know what prayer is? It is not begging God for this and that. The first thing we have to do is to get you beggars to quit begging until a little faith moves in your souls. –John G. Lake

Those who do not believe do not pray. This is a good functional definition of faith. Faith prays, unbelief does not. –John A. Hardon

Pray, and let God worry. — Martin Luther

Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers, pray for powers equal to your task. –Phillips Brooks

If you can’t pray a door open, don’t pry it open.– Lyell Rader