Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.

All things and all people, so to speak, call on us with small or loud voices. They want us to listen. They want us to understand their intrinsic claims, their justice of being. But we can give it to them only through the love that listens.

The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.

He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being.

The most intimate motions within the depths of our souls are not completely our own. For they belong also to our friends, to humankind, to the universe, and the Ground of all being, the aim of our life.

In the depth of the anxiety of having to die is the anxiety of being eternally forgotten.

God does not exist. He is being-itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him.