It is my strong conviction that a realist conception of human nature should be made a servant of an ethic of progressive justice and should not be made into a bastion of conservatism, particularly a conservatism which defends unjust privileges.

In the Old Testament, the God of the Prophets never was completely on Israel's side. There was a primitive national religion, but it was always a transcendent God who had judgment first in the House of God. This is the true religion. It has a sense of a transcendent majesty and a transcendent meaning so that that puts myself and the foe under the same judgment.

There are evidently limits to the achievements of science; and there are irresolvable contradictions both between prosperity and virtue, and between happiness and ``the good life,'' which had not been anticipated in our philosophy.

A church has the right to set its own standards within its community. I don't think it has a right to prohibit birth control or to enforce upon a secular society its conception of divorce and the indissolubility of the marriage tie.

There must be a realm of truth beyond political competence, that's why there must be a separation of churches, but if religion is bad and a bad religion is one that gives an ultimate sanctity to some particular cause.

The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.

The essence of man is his freedom. Sin is committed in that freedom. Sin can therefore not be attributed to a defect in his essence. It can only be understood as a self-contradiction, made possible by the fact of his freedom but not following necessarily from it.