The modern world is not given to uncritical admiration. It expects its idols to have feet of clay and can be reasonably sure that the press and camera will report their exact dimensions.

in modern society, fear of unemployment remains the darkest of the shadows thrown by the past. In an industrial order, a man out of work is almost a man out of life.

Jews were the first to believe that history itself has meaning and that progress, not repetition, is the law of life.

Faith will not be restored in the West because people believe it to be useful. It will return only when they find that it is true.

We cannot cheat on DNA. We cannot get round photosynthesis. We cannot say I am not going to give a damn about phytoplankton. All these tiny mechanisms provide the preconditions of our planetary life. To say we do not care is to say in the most literal sense that "we choose death."

[To the cultures of Asia and the continent of Africa] it is the Western impact which has stirred up the winds of change and set the processes of modernization in motion. Education brought not only the idea of equality but also another belief which we used to take for granted in the West-the idea of progress, the idea that science and technology can be used to better human conditions. In ancient society, men tended to believe themselves fortunate if tomorrow was not worse than today and anyway, there was little they could do about it.

It is only when people begin to shake loose from their preconceptions, from the ideas that have dominated them, that we begin to receive a sense of opening, a sense of vision...That is the sort of time we live in now. We...live in an epoch in which the solid ground of our preconceived ideas shakes daily under our uncertain feet.