The turn from this end [despair] to a new beginning came from three things. A blooming cherry tree, the unexpected kindness of Scottish workers and their families, and the Bible.

To reinvent your own country you need a great audacity of hope.

Capitalism, racism and inhuman technocracy quietly develop in their own way. The causes of misery are no longer to be found in the inner attitudes of men, but have long been institutionalized.

Christ's own 'God-forsaken-ness' on the cross showed me where God is present where God had been present in those nights of deaths in the fire storms in Hamburg and where God would be present in my future whatever may come.

There were two different expectations in this land of the future. On the one hand the the optimistic belief in an unending progress with millenarianistic overtones and on the other hand the doomsday expectation of the final battle of Armageddon. Both are perspectives are uniquely American and both are inter-related.

As long as hope does not embrace and transform the thought and action of men, it remains topsy-turvy and ineffective.

The present time of believers is no longer determined by the past. It takes its definition from the future.