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

In Christian terms, evangelization and humanization are not alternatives. Nor are the vertical dimension of faith and the horizontal dimension of love for ones neighbor and political change.

Imprisoned professors taught imprisoned students free theology.

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.

Despair can be like an iron band constricting the heart.

As time goes on we become old, the future contracts, the past expands...But by future we don't just mean the years ahead; we always mean as well the plenitude of possibilities which challenge our creativity...In confrontation with the future we can become young if we accept the future's challenges.

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.