A competitive society is a society of envy.

Death is what takes place within us when we look upon others not as gift, blessing, or stimulus but as threat, danger, competition.

Really living like Christ will not mean reward, social recognition, and an assured income, but difficulties, discrimination, solitude, anxiety. Here, too, the basic experience of the cross applies: the wider we open our hearts to others, the more audibly we intervene against the injustice that rules over us, the more difficult our lives in the rich unjust society will become.

A language that takes our emotions seriously and gives them real weight in our lives encourages us to think and be and act differently.

The more people anticipate the elimination of suffering the less strength they have actually to oppose it. Whoever deals with his personal suffering only in the way our society has taught him - through illusion, minimization, suppression, apathy - will deal with societal suffering in the same way.

Religion is made up of unrestrained wishes.

This is the purpose of theology. By it my life becomes clearer and more conscious.