Lutherans

"Our people are trying to break the bond set by God. That is human conceit rising against God. In this connection we must warn the Führer, that the adoration frequently bestowed on him is only due to God. Some years ago the Führer objected to having his picture placed on Protestant altars. Today his thoughts are used as a basis not only for political decisions but also for morality and law. He himself is surrounded with the dignity of a priest and even of an intermediary between God and man... We ask that liberty be given to our people to go their way in the future under the sign of the Cross of Christ, in order that our grandsons may not curse their elders on the ground that their elders left them a state on earth that closed to them the Kingdom of God."

"The oppression is growing, and anyone who has had to submit to the Tempter's machine-gun fire during this last week thinks differently from what he did even three weeks ago."

"We have no more thought of using our own powers to escape the arm of authorities than had the Apostles of old. No more are we ready to keep silent at man's behest when God commands us to speak. For it is, and must remain, the case that we must obey God rather than man."

"No honest man or woman in Germany feels responsible for these things. Good Germans took Nazism as a new religion. These people are shocked by the revelations which have shown that Nazism was not idealism, but a means to the performance of criminal acts... In war a German feels bound to join the ranks without question. Three of my sons were called up. I could not hold back. I wrote from the concentration camp to Admiral Raeder, C. in C. of the Navy, asking to be allowed to return to the submarine service or to do any other service in the Navy. I heard nothing for several months, and then a reply came, not from Raeder but from Keitel, head of the Wehrmacht. He thanked me, but regretted I could not be employed on active service."

"Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Kommunist. Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat. Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten, habe ich nicht protestiert; ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter. Als sie die Juden holten, habe ich geschwiegen; ich war ja kein Jude. Als sie mich holten, gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte."

"In Erlangen, for instance, in January 1946 he spoke of meeting a German Jew who had lost everything — parents, brothers, and sisters too. 'I could not help myself', said Niemöller, 'I had to tell him, "Dear brother, fellow man, Jew, before you say anything, I say to you: I acknowledge my guilt and beg you to forgive me and my people for this sin."' Niemöller's stance was by no means entirely welcome to the 1,200 students to whom he was preaching. They shouted and jeered as he preached that Germany must accept responsibility for the five or six million murdered Jews. Students in Marburg and Göttingen similarly heckled him. But Niemöller insisted that "We must openly declare that we are not innocent of the Nazi murders, of the murder of German communists, Poles, Jews, and the people in German-occupied countries. No doubt others made mistakes too, but the wave of crime started here and here it reached its highest peak. The guilt exists, there is no doubt about that — even if there were no other guilt than that of the six million clay urns containing the ashes of incinerated Jews from all over Europe. And this guilt lies heavily upon the German people and the German name, even upon Christendom. For in our world and in our name have these things been done.""

"The renunciation of war as expressed in the Japanese Constitution has given a first ray of hope to a world in darkness and despair, and men today cling to this hope passionately. Can we really do something about it or are we to stand aside as idle onlookers, unable to contribute for better or for worse?"

"I have never concealed the fact and said it before the court in 1938 that I came from an anti-Semitic past and tradition... I ask only that you look at my life historically and take it as history. I believe that from 1933 I truly represented the Lutheran-Christian outlook on the Jewish question — as I revealed before the court — but that I returned home after eight years' imprisonment as a completely different person."

"We had been frightened of atomic weapons since 1945. In those days I became convinced — and remain convinced now — that, after Hitler, Truman was the greatest murderer in the world."

"For politicians truth and falsehood are unimportant. So I never could become a politician — not even a church politician."

"I began my political responsibility as an ultra-conservative. I wanted the Kaiser to come back; and now I am a revolutionary. I really mean that. If I live to be a hundred I shall maybe be an anarchist, for an anarchist wants to do without all government."

"One thing is clear, the president of North Vietnam is not a fanatic. He is a very strong and determined man, but capable of listening, something that is very rare in a person of his position."

"I am now convinced that the Reformation of the church will come from the east. In the west there is no spiritual life. (I'm speaking of the Protestant church and not the Roman Catholic church.) We have civilisation and we try to keep up culture, but we have no spiritual life. The east has a spiritual life. They know that colour influences the spirit more than black lines. In Russia there is still the notion that art is nearer religion than thinking in lines and logic. All abstract rationalising needs to be filled out with sensual thinking and feelings. In Russia there is still a strong impression of colour."

"You suppose that Christianity is oppressed in Germany and that there is a rule by force and secret trial. Though this is not the case, the German State cannot be expected to tolerate incessant attacks, open or veiled, by ministers of the Christian faith upon its very foundations. There are recalcitrant pastors who seem to be unaware of the fact that they would have been shot, hanged or burned long ago if it had not been for the gigantic and successful struggle of Adolf Hitler to safeguard civilization in this country against the horrors of Communism. Therefore by attacking National Socialism, they are striking at themselves."

"The Confessional Church as a whole did not offer resistance in the political sense, with the intent of bringing down the National Socialist regime. It fought first to keep its organizational structures intact and then preserve the independence of church doctrine, according to which the Christian commandments were not to be subordinated to Nazi ideology. However, the regime often felt politically and ideologically attacked by this ecclesiastical and theological contrariness. Henceforth a rupture ran through all the churches of the German states: the adherents of the Confessional Church found themselves increasingly in a state of principled opposition to both the state and the German Christians, who were committed National Socialists. In many Christians of the Confessional Church the oppositional stance eventually evolved into political resistance. Duty bound by conscience and often entirely on their own (and at other times supported by their fellow congregants), they fought with the means at their disposal—sermons and the written word—first against state intrusion into church life and then against National Socialist ideology in practice, for example when it targeted the handicapped. Moreover, they also opposed a Christian faith that was blended with anti-Semitism and “neo-Pagan heresies.” The latter included the call for a “heroic Jesus” as well as the desire for a “true to type” faith founded on “race, national characteristics [Volkstum], and nation.”"

"He called on the people to show a sense of responsibility towards their fellow-men, he abjured them not to forget the lessons of the past and, above all, he reminded them constantly of the burden of guilt which had to be redeemed before a new life could begin. In so doing he was at pains not to exclude himself from a like responsibility, and told in this connexion the story of the visit which he and his wife paid to Dachau in the autumn of 1945. "After showing her the cell in which he had been confined for so many months, they passed the crematorium. A great white-painted board had been affixed to a tree and on it, in black letters, they read: "Here between the years 1933 and 1945 238,756 human beings were incinerated." At that moment, Niemoller told his audience, the consciousness of his own guilt and his own failure assailed him as never before. "And God asked me — as once He asked the First Man after the Fall, Adam — Man, where wast thou in those years 1933 to 1945? I knew I had no answer to that question. True, I had an alibi in my pocket, for the years 1937 to 1945, my identity disc from the concentration camp. But what help to me was that? God was not asking me where I had been from 1937 to 1945, but from 1933 to 1945, and for the years 1933 to 1937 I had no answer. Should I have said perhaps: 'As a pastor in those years I bore courageous witness to the Faith; I dared to speak, and risked life and freedom in doing so?' But God did not ask about that. God asked: 'Where were you from 1933 to 1945 when human beings were incinerated here? When, in 1933, Goering publicly boasted that all active Communists had been imprisoned and rendered harmless — that was when we forgot our responsibility, that was when we should have warned our parishioners. Many a man from my own parish, who went and joined the National Socialist Party and who is now to do penance for his act, could rise up against me today and say that he would have acted differently if I had not kept silence at that time. … I know that I made my contribution towards the enslavement of the German people."

"The Reverend Martin Niemoeller had personally welcomed the coming to power of the Nazis in 1933. In that year his autobiography, From U-boat to Pulpit, had been published. The story of how this submarine commander in the First World War had become a prominent Protestant pastor was singled out for special praise in the Nazi press and became a best seller. To Pastor Niemoeller, as to many a Protestant clergyman, the fourteen years of the Republic had been, as he said, "years of darkness" and at the close of his autobiography he added a note of satisfaction that the Nazi revolution had finally triumphed and that it had brought about the "national revival" for which he himself had fought so long — for a time in the free corps, from which so many Nazi leaders had come. He was soon to experience a terrible disillusionment. … By the beginning of 1934, the disillusioned Pastor Niemoeller had become the guiding spirit of the minority resistance in both the "Confessional Church" and the Pastor's Emergency League."

"Niemöller had once again delivered a rebellious sermon in Dahlem; at the same time transcripts of his tapped telephone conversations were presented to Hitler. In a bellow, Hitler ordered Niemöller to be put in a concentration camp and, since he had proven himself to be incorrigible, kept there for life."

"Unser Leben ist kein Traum, aber es soll und wird vielleicht einer werden."

"There are ideal series of events which run parallel with the real ones. They rarely coincide. Men and circumstances generally modify the ideal train of events, so that it seems imperfect, and its consequences are equally imperfect. Thus with the Reformation; instead of Protestantism came Lutheranism."

"Fate and temperament are the names of a concept."

"Fate and temperament are two words for one and the same concept."

"I was still blind, but twinkling stars did dance Throughout my being's limitless expanse, Nothing had yet drawn close, only at distant stages I found myself, a mere suggestion sensed in past and future ages."

"Wahrhafte Anarchie ist das Zeugungselement der Religion. Aus der Vernichtung alles Positiven hebt sie ihr glorreiches Haupt als neue Weltstifterin empor..."

"Blood will stream over Europe until the nations become aware of the frightful madness which drives them in circles. And then, struck by celestial music and made gentle, they approach their former altars all together, hear about the works of peace, and hold a great celebration of peace with fervent tears before the smoking altars."

"Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason."

"The world must be romanticized. In this way the originary meaning may be found again."

"To romanticize the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite."

"To get to know a truth properly, one must polemicize it."

"Morality must be the heart of our existence, if it is to be what it wants to be for us. ... The highest form of philosophy is ethics. Thus all philosophy begins with “I am.” The highest statement of cognition must be an expression of that fact which is the means and ground for all cognition, namely, the goal of the I."

"Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy."

"Every stage of education begins with childhood. That is why the most educated person on earth so much resembles a child."

"Philosophy ... bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom."

"The poem of the understanding is philosophy."

"Die Möglichkeit aller Philosophie ... dass sich die Intelligenz durch Selbstberührung eine Selbstgesezmäßige Bewegung - d.i. eine eigne Form der Tätigkeit gibt."

"Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests."

"Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things."

"Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word Liberty entire nations."

"Imagination places the future world for us either above or below or in reincarnation. We dream of travels throughout the universe: is not the universe within us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. The mysterious path leads within. In us, or nowhere, lies eternity with its worlds, the past and the future."

"Self-alienation is the source of all degradation as well as, on the contrary, the basis of all true elevation. The first step will be a look inward, an isolating contemplation of our self. Whoever remains standing here proceeds only halfway. The second step must be an active look outward, an autonomous, determined observation of the outer world."

"We are on a mission: we are called to the cultivation of the earth."

"Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise."

"The best thing about the sciences is their philosophical ingredient, like life for an organic body. If one dephilosophizes the sciences, what remains left? Earth, air, and water."

"Poets and priests were one in the beginning, and they only separated in later times. But the real poet is always a priest, just as the real priest always remains a poet."

"Nothing is more indispensable to true religiosity than a mediator that links us with divinity."

"Tools arm the man. One can well say that man is capable of bringing forth a world; he lacks only the necessary apparatus, the corresponding armature of his sensory tools. The beginning is there. Thus the principle of a warship lies in the idea of the shipbuilder, who is able to incorporate this thought by making himself into a gigantic machine, as it were, through a mass of men and appropriate tools and materials. Thus the idea of a moment often required monstrous organs, monstrous masses of materials, and man is therefore a potential, if not an actual creator."

"Building worlds is not enough for the deeper urging mind; but a loving heart sates the striving spirit."

"Before abstraction everything is one, but one like chaos; after abstraction everything is united again, but this union is a free binding of autonomous, self-determined beings. Out of a mob a society has developed, chaos has been transformed into a manifold world."

"If the world is a precipitation of human nature, so to speak, then the divine world is a sublimation of the same. Both occur in one act. No precipitation without sublimation. What goes lost there in agility, is won here."

"Where children are, there is a golden age."

"Many counterrevolutionary books have been written in favor of the Revolution. But Burke has written a revolutionary book against the Revolution."

"Most observers of the French Revolution, especially the clever and noble ones, have explained it as a life-threatening and contagious illness. They have remained standing with the symptoms and have interpreted these in manifold and contrary ways. Some have regarded it as a merely local ill. The most ingenious opponents have pressed for castration. They well noticed that this alleged illness is nothing other than the crisis of beginning puberty."

"The normal present connects the past and the future through limitation. Contiguity results, crystallization by means of solidification. There also exists, however, a spiritual present that identifies past and future through dissolution, and this mixture is the element, the atmosphere of the poet."

"The art of writing books is not yet invented. But it is at the point of being invented. Fragments of this nature are literary seeds. There may be many an infertile grain among them: nevertheless, if only some come up!"

"Die Liebe wirkt magisch. Sie ist der Endzweck der Weltgeschichte, das Amen des Universums."

"Man is a sun and his senses are the planets."

"The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap."

"I. The Pupil. — Men travel in manifold paths: whoso traces and compares these, will find strange Figures come to light; Figures which seem as if they belonged to that great Cipher-writing which one meets with everywhere, on wings of birds, shells of eggs, in clouds, in the snow, in crystals, in forms of rocks, in freezing waters, in the interior and exterior of mountains, of plants, animals, men, in the lights of the sky, in plates of glass and pitch when touched and struck on, in the filings round the magnet, and the singular conjunctures of Chance. In such Figures one anticipates the key to that wondrous Writing, the grammar of it; but this Anticipation will not fix itself into shape, and appears as if, after all, it would not become such a key for us. An Alcahest seems poured out over the senses of men. Only for a moment will their wishes, their thoughts thicken into form. Thus do their Anticipations arise; but after short whiles, all is again swimming vaguely before them, even as it did."

"No explanation is required for Holy Writing. Whoso speaks truly is full of eternal life, and wonderfully related to genuine mysteries does his Writing appear to us, for it is a Concord from the Symphony of the Universe."

"Surely this voice meant our Teacher; for it is he that can collect the indications which lie scattered on all sides. A singular light kindles in his looks, when at length the high Rune lies before us, and he watches in our eyes whether the star has yet risen upon us, which is to make the Figure visible and intelligible."

"Over his own heart and his own thoughts he watched attentively. He knew not whither his longing was carrying him. As he grew up, he wandered far and wide; viewed other lands, other seas, new atmospheres, new rocks, unknown plants, animals, men; descended into caverns, saw how in courses and varying strata the edifice of the Earth was completed, and fashioned clay into strange figures of rocks. By and by, he came to find everywhere objects already known, but wonderfully mingled, united; and thus often extraordinary things came to shape in him. He soon became aware of combinations in all, of conjunctures, concurrences. Erelong, he no more saw anything alone. — In great variegated images, the perceptions of his senses crowded round him; he heard, saw, touched and thought at once. He rejoiced to bring strangers together. Now the stars were men, now men were stars, the stones animals, the clouds plants; he sported with powers and appearances; he knew where and how this and that was to be found, to be brought into action; and so himself struck over the strings, for tones and touches of his own."

"What has passed with him since then he does not disclose to us. He tells us that we ourselves, led on by him and our own desire, will discover what has passed with him. Many of us have withdrawn from him. They returned to their parents, and learned trades. Some have been sent out by him, we know not whither; he selected them. Of these, some have been but a short time there, others longer. One was still a child; scarcely was he come, when our Teacher was for passing him any more instruction. This child had large dark eyes with azure ground, his skin shone like lilies, and his locks like light little clouds when it is growing evening. His voice pierced through all our hearts; willingly would we have given him our flowers, stones, pens, all we had. He smiled with an infinite earnestness; and we had a strange delight beside him. One day he will come again, said our Teacher, and then our lessons end. — Along with him he sent one, for whom we had often been sorry. Always sad he looked; he had been long years here; nothing would succeed with him; when we sought crystals or flowers, he seldom found. He saw dimly at a distance; to lay down variegated rows skilfully he had no power. He was so apt to break everything. Yet none had such eagerness, such pleasure in hearing and listening. At last, — it was before that Child came into our circle, — he all at once grew cheerful and expert. One day he had gone out sad; he did not return, and the night came on. We were very anxious for him; suddenly, as the morning dawned, we heard his voice in a neighbouring grove. He was singing a high, joyful song; we were all surprised; the Teacher looked to the East, such a look as I shall never see in him again. The singer soon came forth to us, and brought, with unspeakable blessedness on his face, a simple-looking little stone, of singular shape. The Teacher took it in his hand, and kissed him long; then looked at us with wet eyes, and laid this little stone on an empty space, which lay in the midst of other stones, just where, like radii, many rows of them met together."

"I shall in no time forget that moment. We felt as if we had had in our souls a clear passing glimpse into this wondrous World."

"No one, of a surety, wanders farther from the mark than he who fancies to himself that he already understands this marvellous Kingdom, and can, in few words, fathom its constitution, and everywhere find the right path. To no one, who has broken off, and made himself an Island, will insight rise of itself, nor even without toilsome effort. Only to children, or childlike men, who know not what they do, can this happen. Long, unwearied intercourse, free and wise Contemplation, attention to faint tokens and indications; an inward poet-life, practised senses, a simple and devout spirit: these are the essential requisites of a true Friend of Nature; without these no one can attain his wish."

"Not wise does it seem to attempt comprehending and understanding a Human World without full perfected Humanity. No talent must sleep; and if all are not alike active, all must be alert, and not oppressed and enervated. As we see a future Painter in the boy who fills every wall with sketches and variedly adds colour to figure; so we see a future Philosopher in him who restlessly traces and questions all natural things, pays heed to all, brings together whatever is remarkable, and rejoices when he has become master and possessor of a new phenomenon, of a new power and piece of knowledge."

"Now to Some it appears not at all worth while to follow out the endless divisions of Nature; and moreover a dangerous undertaking, without fruit and issue. As we can never reach, say they, the absolutely smallest grain of material bodies, never find their simplest compartments, since all magnitude loses itself, forwards and backwards, in infinitude; so likewise is it with the species of bodies and powers; here too one comes on new species, new combinations, new appearances, even to infinitude. These seem only to stop, continue they, when our diligence tires; and so it is spending precious time with idle contemplations and tedious enumerations; and this becomes at last a true delirium, a real vertigo over the horrid Deep"

"Nature too remains, so far as we have yet come, ever a frightful Machine of Death: everywhere monstrous revolution, inexplicable vortices of movement; a kingdom of Devouring, of the maddest tyranny; a baleful Immense: the few light-points disclose but a so much the more appalling Night, and terrors of all sorts must palsy every observer."

"The waking man looks without fear at this offspring of his lawless Imagination; for he knows that they are but vain Spectres of his weakness. He feels himself lord of the world: his me hovers victorious over the Abyss; and will through Eternities hover aloft above that endless Vicissitude. Harmony is what his spirit strives to promulgate, to extend. He will even to infinitude grow more and more harmonious with himself and with his Creation; and at every step behold the all-efficiency of a high moral Order in the Universe, and what is purest of his Me come forth into brighter and brighter clearness. This significance of the World is Reason; for her sake is the World here; and when it is grown to be the arena of a childlike, expanding Reason, it will one day become the divine Image of her Activity, the scene of a genuine Church. Till then let man honour Nature as the Emblem of his own Spirit; the Emblem ennobling itself, along with him, to unlimited degrees. Let him, therefore, who would arrive at knowledge of Nature, train his moral sense, let him act and conceive in accordance with the noble Essence of his Soul; and as if of herself Nature will become open to him. Moral Action is that great and only Experiment, in which all riddles of the most manifold appearances explain themselves. Whoso understands it, and in rigid sequence of Thought can lay it open, is forever master of Nature."

"Common Logic is the Grammar of the higher Speech, that is, of Thought; it examines merely the relations of ideas to one another, the Mechanics of Thought, the pure Physiology of ideas. Now logical ideas stand related to one another, like words without thoughts. Logic occupies itself with the mere dead Body of the Science of Thinking. — Metaphysics, again, is the Dynamics of Thought; treats of the primary Powers of Thought; occupies itself with the mere Soul of the Science of Thinking. Metaphysical ideas stand related to one another, like thoughts without words. Men often wondered at the stubborn Incompletibility of these two Sciences; each followed its own business by itself; there was a want everywhere, nothing would suit rightly with either. From the very first, attempts were made to unite them, as everything about them indicated relationship; but every attempt failed; the one or the other Science still suffered in these attempts, and lost its essential character. We had to abide by metaphysical Logic, and logical Metaphysic, but neither of them was as it should be."

"The rude, discursive Thinker is the Scholastic (Schoolman Logician). The true Scholastic is a mystical Subtlist; out of logical Atoms he builds his Universe; he annihilates all living Nature, to put an Artifice of Thoughts (Gedankenkunststuck, literally Conjuror's-trick of Thoughts) in its room. His aim is an infinite Automaton. Opposite to him is the rude, intuitive Poet: this is a mystical Macrologist: he hates rules and fixed form; a wild, violent life reigns instead of it in Nature; all is animate, no law; wilfulness and wonder everywhere. He is merely dynamical. Thus does the Philosophic Spirit arise at first, in altogether separate masses. In the second stage of culture these masses begin to come in contact, multifariously enough; and, as in the union of infinite Extremes, the Finite, the Limited arises, so here also arise "Eclectic Philosophers" without number; the time of misunderstanding begins. The most limited is, in this stage, the most important, the purest Philosopher of the second stage. This class occupies itself wholly with the actual, present world, in the strictest sense. The Philosophers of the first class look down with contempt on those of the second; say, they are a little of everything, and so nothing; hold their views as the results of weakness, as Inconsequentism. On the contrary, the second class, in their turn, pity the first; lay the blame on their visionary enthusiasm, which they say is absurd, even to insanity."

"If on the one hand the Scholastics and Alchemists seem to be utterly at variance, and the Eclectics on the other hand quite at one, yet, strictly examined, it is altogether the reverse. The former, in essentials, are indirectly of one opinion; namely, as regards the non-dependence, and infinite character of Meditation, they both set out from the Absolute: whilst the Eclectic and limited sort are essentially at variance; and agree only in what is deduced. The former are infinite but uniform, the latter bounded but multiform; the former have genius, the latter talent; those have Ideas, these have knacks (Handgriffe); those are heads without hands, these are hands without heads. The third stage is for the Artist, who can be at once implement and genius. He finds that that primitive Separation in the absolute Philosophical Activities' (between the Scholastic, and the "rude, intuitive Poet") 'is a deeper-lying Separation in his own Nature; which Separation indicates, by its existence as such, the possibility of being adjusted, of being joined: he finds that, heterogeneous as these Activities are, there is yet a faculty in him of passing from the one to the other, of changing his polarity at will. He discovers in them, therefore, necessary members of his spirit; he observes that both must be united in some common Principle. He infers that Eclecticism is nothing but the imperfect defective employment of this principle."

"Someone arrived there — who lifted the veil of the goddess, at Sais. — But what did he see? He saw — wonder of wonders — himself."

"Philosophy can bake no bread; but she can procure for us God, Freedom, Immortality. Which, then, is more practical, Philosophy or Economy?"

"Philosophie ist eigentlich Heimweh - Trieb überall zu Hause zu sein."

"We are near awakening when we dream that we dream."

"The true philosophical Act is annihilation of self (Selbsttodtung); this is the real beginning of all Philosophy; all requisites for being a Disciple of Philosophy point hither. This Act alone corresponds to all the conditions and characteristics of transcendental conduct."

"To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it."

"Man is the higher Sense of our Planet; the star which connects it with the upper world; the eye which it turns towards Heaven."

"Life is a disease of the spirit; a working incited by Passion. Rest is peculiar to the spirit."

"What is Nature? An encyclopedical, systematic Index or Plan of our Spirit. Why will we content us with the mere catalogue of our Treasures? Let us contemplate them ourselves, and in all ways elaborate and use them."

"If our Bodily Life is a burning, our Spiritual Life is a being burnt, a Combustion (or, is precisely the inverse the case?); Death, therefore, perhaps a Change of Capacity."

"Sleep is for the inhabitants of Planets only. In another time, Man will sleep and wake continually at once. The greater part of our Body, of our Humanity itself, yet sleeps a deep sleep."

"There is but one Temple in the World; and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than this high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hand on a human body."

"Man is a Sun; his Senses are the Planets."

"Man has ever expressed some symbolical Philosophy of his Being in his Works and Conduct; he announces himself and his Gospel of Nature; he is the Messiah of Nature."

"Plants are Children of the Earth; we are Children of the Æther. Our Lungs are properly our Root; we live, when we breathe; we begin our life with breathing."

"Nature is an Æolian Harp, a musical instrument; whose tones again are keys to higher strings in us."

"The first Man is the first Spirit-seer; all appears to him as Spirit. What are children, but first men? The fresh gaze of the Child is richer in significance than the forecasting of the most indubitable Seer."

"It depends only on the weakness of our organs and of our self-excitement (Selbstberuhrung), that we do not see ourselves in a Fairy-world. All Fabulous Tales (Mahrchen) are merely dreams of that home world, which is everywhere and nowhere. The higher powers in us, which one day as Genies, shall fulfil our will, are, for the present, Muses, which refresh us on our toilsome course with sweet remembrances."

"Man consists in Truth. If he exposes Truth, he exposes himself. If he betrays Truth, he betrays himself. We speak not here of lies, but of acting against Conviction."

"A character is a completely fashioned will. (vollkommen gebildeter Wille)."

"There is, properly speaking, no Misfortune in the world. Happiness and Misfortune stand in continual balance. Every Misfortune is, as it were, the obstruction of a stream, which, after overcoming this obstruction, but bursts through with the greater force."

"The ideal of Morality has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of highest Strength, of most powerful life; which also has been named (very falsely as it was there meant) the ideal of poetic greatness. It is the maximum of the savage; and has, in these times, gained, precisely among the greatest weaklings, very many proselytes. By this ideal, man becomes a Beast-Spirit, a Mixture; whose brutal wit has, for weaklings, a brutal power of attraction."

"The spirit of Poesy is the morning light, which makes the Statue of Memnon sound."

"The division of Philosopher and Poet is only apparent, and to the disadvantage of both. It is a sign of disease, and of a sickly constitution."

"The true Poet is all-knowing; he is an actual world in miniature."

"Goethe is an altogether practical Poet. He is in his works what the English are in their wares: highly simple, neat, convenient and durable. He has done in German Literature what Wedgwood did in English Manufacture. He has, like the English, a natural turn for Economy, and a noble Taste acquired by Understanding. Both these are very compatible, and have a near affinity in the chemical sense."

"Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship may be called throughout prosaic and modern. The Romantic sinks to ruin, the Poesy of Nature, the Wonderful. The Book treats merely of common worldly things: Nature and Mysticism are altogether forgotten. It is a poetised civic and household History; the Marvellous is expressly treated therein as imagination and enthusiasm. Artistic Atheism is the spirit of the Book. ... It is properly a Candide, directed against Poetry: the Book is highly unpoetical in respect of spirit, poetical as the dress and body of it are."

"When we speak of the aim and Art observable in Shakespeare's works, we must not forget that Art belongs to Nature; that it is, so to speak, self-viewing, self-imitating, self-fashioning Nature. The Art of a well-developed genius is far different from the Artfulness of the Understanding, of the merely reasoning mind. Shakspeare was no calculator, no learned thinker; he was a mighty, many-gifted soul, whose feelings and works, like products of Nature, bear the stamp of the same spirit; and in which the last and deepest of observers will still find new harmonies with the infinite structure of the Universe; concurrences with later ideas, affinities with the higher powers and senses of man. They are emblematic, have many meanings, are simple and inexhaustible, like products of Nature; and nothing more unsuitable could be said of them than that they are works of Art, in that narrow mechanical acceptation of the word."

"Novalis has been, and remains, one of the most vital influences in German literature; the modern mystics: Maeterlinck, Herman Hesse and Rilke (often considered the greatest poet of the twentieth century) admit a great debt to him. ... Novalis expresses himself in a unique, personal style, almost as if he has discovered language by himself. ... Novalis himself wrote that he felt it necessary to develop a symbolic philosophical language for the purpose of protecting his deepest insights from those incapable of respecting them. In this he has not been alone — if we look at the words of the Sufis we often find mystical concepts veiled in poetic terms. ... The principle mode of concealment is the use of imagery. Images are used to veil meaning, but for those who share Novalis' love of symbolic imagery and subtle metaphor his language is a veil that enhances, rather than conceals, the beauty of his art. This use of concrete, palpable images overcame, to some extent, what he described as the “poverty of words”; and avoided the use of philosophical terms to express abstract concepts. In some instances spiritual qualities are personified as characters, human or divine, as they are in Hindu mythology... Novalis is known as the originator of the central symbol of the German Romanticism, The Blue Flower; he shared in the movement's deification of Nature, the demand for the Absolute, the idea of spiritual rebirth. ... Novalis, like other poets of the period, wanted to return to the sense of the Sacred found in the humbler Medieval tradition with its great mystics such as Hildegard von Bingen and Meister Eckhart."

"Novalis is a figure of such importance in German Literature, that no student of it can pass him by without attention."

"Novalis's ideas, on what has been called the 'perfectibility of man,' ground themselves on his peculiar views of the constitution of material and spiritual Nature, and are of the most original and extraordinary character. With our utmost effort, we should despair of communicating other than a quite false notion of them. He asks, for instance, with scientific gravity: Whether any one, that recollects the first kind glance of her he loved, can doubt the possibility of Magic?"

"As a Poet, Novalis is no less Idealistic than as a Philosopher. His poems are breathings of a high devout soul, feeling always that here he has no home, but looking, as in clear vision, to a 'city that hath foundations.' He loves external Nature with a singular depth; nay, we might say, he reverences her, and holds unspeakable communings with her: for Nature is no longer dead, hostile Matter, but the veil and mysterious Garment of the Unseen; as it were, the Voice with which the Deity proclaims himself to man. These two qualities, -- his pure religious temper, and heartfelt love of Nature, — bring him into true poetic relation both with the spiritual and the material World, and perhaps constitute his chief worth as a Poet; for which art he seems to have originally a genuine, but no exclusive or even very decided endowment."

"The ardent and holy Novalis..."

"For Novalis the poetic in the world was the only genuine reality, even as the poetic spirit in man was the proof of man's divine origin. All of his poetry is concerned ultimately with revealing and celebrating the poetic spirit."

"In this season, Novalis lived only to his sorrow; it was natural for him to regard the visible and the invisible world as one; and to distinguish Life and Death only by his longing for the latter. At the same time too, Life became for him a glorified Life; and his whole being melted away as into a bright, conscious vision of a higher Existence. ... He remained many weeks in Thuringia; and came back comforted and truly purified, to his engagements; which he pursued more zealously than ever, though he now regarded himself as a stranger on the earth."

"Never was he seen languid or exhausted, never out of spirits or out of humor."

"Krieg ohne Haß"

"The art of concentrating strength at one point, forcing a breakthrough, rolling up and securing the flanks on either side, and then penetrating like lightning, before the enemy has time to react, deep into his rear."

"The German soldier has astonished the world; the Italian Bersagliere has astonished the German soldier."

"One must not judge everyone in the world by his qualities as a soldier: otherwise we should have no civilization."

"Gentlemen, you have fought like lions and been led by donkeys."

"Be an example to your men in your duty and in private life. Never spare yourself, and let the troops see that you don't, in your endurance of fatigue and privation. Always be tactful and well-mannered and teach your subordinates to be the same. Avoid excessive sharpness or harshness of voice, which usually indicates the man who has shortcomings of his own to hide."

"Lieber zuviel als zu wenig Spatengebrauch! Diese Arbeit spart Blut."

"Den Kampf Mann gegen Mann gewinnt bei gleichwertigen Gegnern, wer eine Patrone mehr im Lauf hat."

"When a commander has won a decisive victory - and Wavell's victory over the Italians was devastating - it is generally wrong for him to be satisfied with too narrow a strategic aim. For that is the time to exploit success. It is during the pursuit, when the beaten enemy is still dispirited and disorganised, that most prisoners are made and most booty captured. Troops who on one day are flying in a wild panic to the rear, may, unless they are continually harried by the pursuer, very soon stand in battle again, freshly organised as fully effective fighting men."

"Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas."

"The Italian command was, for the most part, not equal to the task of carrying on war in the desert, where the requirement was lightning decision followed by immediate action. The training of the Italian infantryman fell far short of the standard required by modern warfare. ... Particularly harmful was the all pervading differentiation between officer and man. While the men had to make shift without field-kitchens, the officers, or many of them, refused adamantly to forgo their several course meals. Many officers, again, considered it unnecessary to put in an appearance during battle and thus set the men an example. All in all, therefore, it was small wonder that the Italian soldier, who incidentally was extraordinarily modest in his needs, developed a feeling of inferiority which accounted for his occasional failure and moments of crisis. There was no foreseeable hope of a change for the better in any of these matters, although many of the bigger men among the Italian officers were making sincere efforts in that direction."

"Anyone who has to fight, even with the most modern weapons, against an enemy in complete command of the air, fights like a savage against modern European troops, under the same handicaps and with the same chances of success."

"The military career of most of the people who aimed these accusations at us was notable for a consistent absence from the front, on the principle of "weit vom Schuss gibt alte Kreiger" - "far from the battle makes old soldiers.""

"But courage which goes against military expediency is stupidity, or, if it is insisted upon by a commander, irresponsibility."

"Thus the British lost the very able and adaptable commander David Stirling of the desert group SAS which had caused us more damage than any other British unit of equal strength."

"In Tunisia the Americans had to pay a stiff price for their experience, but it brought rich dividends. Even at that time, the American generals showed themselves to be very advanced in the tactical handling of their forces, although we had to wait until the Patton Army in France to see the most astonishing achievements in mobile warfare."

"Don't fight a battle if you don't gain anything by winning."

"Good soldiers, bad officers; however don't forget that without them we would not have any Civilization."

"Krieg ohne Haß (War without Hate)"

"He was a tactician of the greatest ability, with a firm grasp of every detail of the employment of armour in action, and very quick to seize the fleeting opportunity and the critical turning point of a mobile battle. I felt certain doubts, however, about his strategic ability, in particular as to whether he fully understood the importance of a sound administrative plan. Happiest while controlling a mobile force directly under his own eyes he was liable to overexploit immediate success without sufficient thought for the future."

"There exists a real danger that our friend Rommel is becoming a kind of magical or bogey-man to our troops, who are talking far too much about him. He is by no means a superman, although he is undoubtedly very energetic and able. Even if he were a superman, it would still be highly undesirable that our men should credit him with supernatural powers. I wish you to dispel by all possible means the idea that Rommel represents something more than an ordinary German general. ... I am not jealous of Rommel."

"He was a splendid military gambler, dominating the problems of supply and scornful of opposition ... His ardour and daring inflicted grievous disasters upon us, but he deserves the salute which I made him — and not without some reproaches from the public — in the House of Commons in January 1942, when I said of him, "We have a very daring and skilful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general." He also deserves our respect because, although a loyal German soldier, he came to hate Hitler and all his works, and took part in the conspiracy of 1944 to rescue Germany by displacing the maniac and tyrant. For this, he paid the forfeit of his life. In the sombre wars of modern democracy chivalry finds no place ... Still, I do not regret or retract the tribute I paid to Rommel, unfashionable though it was judged."

"Rommel was jumpy, wanted to do everything at once, then lost interest. Rommel was my superior in command in Normandy. I cannot say Rommel wasn't a good general. When successful, he was good; during reverses, he became depressed."

"Hitler might have accepted his military leaders' advice (notably that of Admiral Raeder) and focused his attention on winning the war in the Mediterranean in 1941, before invading the Soviet Union. He might, for example, have struck across the Eastern Mediterranean to Cyprus, Lebanon and Syria; or through Turkey (violating her neutrality) towards the Caucasus; or across Egypt to Suez and beyond. Even as it was, the British positions in Malta and Egypt were acutely vulnerable. Rommel might well have been able to drive the British out of Egypt if he had been sent the twenty-nine German divisions that were sitting more or less idle in Western Europe."

"Rommel's presence, as ever, acted as a tonic on his troops. Anybody who once came under the spell of his personality, a brother officer wrote, turned into a "real soldier". However tough the strain Rommel seemed inexhaustible, seemed to know exactly how the enemy would probably react. The same officer wrote that Rommel had an exceptional imagination, seemed to know no fear whatsoever, and that his men "idolized him"."

"Beyond dispute, Rommel was a master of manoeuvre on the battlefield and a leader of the purest quality. Wherever he appeared he inspired. His speed of perception and decision, his energy of execution and his boldness of concept placed him among the great; and his military exploits have left a footprint in history as clear as that of Prince Rupert, to whom Montgomery once, in a somewhat uncharacteristic flight of imagery, likened him. Certainly he erred badly at times. The first attack on Tobruk was hasty and ill-prepared, the 'dash to the wire' was prompted by a misreading of the situation, Alam Halfa offered only improbable chances of success (and was called off early), Medenine was a disaster. But the victories, generally with the dice loaded against him, display a very recognizable quality of command, a quintessential 'Rommel'."

"But he was more than a tactical commander of bravery and genius. He was reflective. He evolved from his own experience and observations solderly lessons which he committed to paper and from which all learned and continue to learn. Wherever he went, as has been remarked, he taught; and he teaches still. Rommel was not only a master practitioner; he deduced theory from practice and the military art benefited therefrom."

"Montgomery claimed that his own achievements derived from the fact that he never fought an unsuccessful battle, and for Montgomery this was both an accurate statement and a wise policy. It was, however, a policy only available to one with both time and resources. Rommel, more often than not, had insufficient of either. Nor was he ever in a position to wait until his situation and the odds improved. He fought at a numerical disadvantage again and again, and his exploits can only be measured against that fact. He relied on skill to offset quantitative inferiority. The bitter exclamation, already quoted, comes to mind: 'If one considers what the German Marshal could have achieved with the superiority enjoyed by his opponents...' War is usually an option of difficulties. Again and again Rommel could choose inactivity or take a calculated risk. He believed that inactivity is seldom forgiven a general by fate."

"Of course, Rommel, ultimately, was beaten. He lost. But, although what matters in war is to win, that truism cannot provide the sole criterion for judgment of military talent. War may also be considered as a business, but its conduct is also an art. Ultimately Napoleon was beaten. So was Montrose. So was Lee. Few could deny their genius. With all his imperfections, Rommel as a leader of men in battle stands in their company."

"Until I delved into Rommel's own papers I regarded him as a brilliant tactician and great fighting leader, but did not realize how deep a sense of strategy he had — or at any rate, developed in reflection."

"He was the best leader of fast-moving troops but only up to army level. Above that level it was too much for him. Rommel was given too much responsibility. He was a good commander for a corps of army but he was too moody, too changeable. One moment he would be enthusiastic, next moment depressed."

"Born in southern Germany to middle-class parents, Rommel had won acclaim during World War I for his personal heroism as a young officer who specialized in tactics of infiltration behind enemy lines. Hitler's willingness to adopt new and unorthodox military ideas quickly won Rommel's admiration, and Rommel's relatively humble origins endeared him to the Fuehrer, who often felt uncomfortable in the presence of aristocratic generals. Hitler appointed Rommel to command his personal bodyguard in 1938. Until 1939, Rommel had always been an infantry officer, but the success of the Blitzkrieg in Poland made him a true believer in armored warfare. Soon afterward, Hitler helped him obtain command of a panzer division. Despite his lack of previous experience with tanks, Rommel mastered armored operations in a remarkably brief time. Indeed, his division performed with conspicuous success during the 1940 campaign in Western Europe. Like Guderian, he believed in he swiftest possible exploitation of a breakthrough. This continued to be his philosophy when he took over his new command in Libya."

"Self-restraint, even chivalry... distinguished the combatants on both sides throughout the North Africa campaign... The leading exemplar of this code was Rommel himself. When orders from Hitler mandated the execution of captured British commandos, Rommel tossed the document in the trash. He insisted that the Allied prisoners receive the same rations he was given. He even wrote a book about the conflict called Krieg ohne Haß (War Without Hate). Memoirs of the North Africa campaign attest that, fierce and brutal as much of the fighting was, relations between individual enemies retained a quality of forbearance that seems, today, almost impossible to imagine."

"Rommel had gained the world's respect for his military genius. He was a legend. ... Rommel was reminiscent of the more romantic, chivalrous days of old — and was a genuinely humane military officer. Rommel was Germany's best General. You have to remember all of Europe was in Nazi hands at the time. The Americans hadn't entered the war yet. Russia was being attacked by 166 Nazi divisions. Things were grim. And Rommel, the greatest desert fighting general of all time, and his Africa Korps, were kicking the British's butt, pushing them back to Cairo. It became a case where the war might have been lost right there."

"He was ordered several times by Hitler to "Stand and Die." To fight to the last bullet, the last man. To execute and torture prisoners. He defied those orders."

"Rommel had a feel for the battlefield like no other man."

"At about twelve o'clock a dark-green car with a Berlin number stopped in front of our garden gate. The only men in the house apart from my father, were Captain Aldinger [Rommel's aide] , a badly wounded war-veteran corporal and myself. Two generals — Burgdorf, a powerful florid man, and Maisel, small and slender — alighted from the car and entered the house. They were respectful and courteous and asked my father's permission to speak to him alone. Aldinger and I left the room. "So they are not going to arrest him," I thought with relief, as I went upstairs to find myself a book. A few minutes later I heard my father come upstairs and go into my mother's room. Anxious to know what was afoot, I got up and followed him. He was standing in the middle of the room, his face pale. "Come outside with me," he said in a tight voice. We went into my room. "I have just had to tell your mother," he began slowly, "that I shall be dead in a quarter of an hour." He was calm as he continued: "To die by the hand of one's own people is hard. But the house is surrounded and Hitler is charging me with high treason. 'In view of my services in Africa'," he quoted sarcastically, "I am to have the chance of dying by poison. The two generals have brought it with them. It's fatal in three seconds. If I accept, none of the usual steps will be taken against my family, that is against you. They will also leave my staff alone." "Do you believe it?" I interrupted. "Yes," he replied. "I believe it. It is very much in their interest to see that the affair does not come out into the open. By the way, I have been charged to put you under a promise of the strictest silence. If a single word of this comes out, they will no longer feel themselves bound by the agreement." I tried again. "Can't we defend ourselves…" He cut me off short. "There's no point," he said. "It's better for one to die than for all of us to be killed in a shooting affray. Anyway, we've practically no ammunition.""

""Rommel, Rommel, Rommel!" Churchill had cried, as he paced up and down his room in the Cairo Embassy. "What else matters but beating him!" The Rommel magic had become legend even among British troops. A shake-up might help break the spell, Churchill reasoned. General Sir Claude Auchinleck was a much admired soldier, but his command seemed poorly coordinated and his troops lacking in confidence in their leaders. "To take or destroy" Rommel was now the assigned task of [two men], the very able General Sir Harold Alexander and the then little known General Bernard Montgomery."

"Rommel was bitter afterward about Hitler's "victory or death" order, which, he said, kept him fighting at El Alamein twenty-four hours longer than he should have. As a result, a large part of Rommel's infantry and motorized troops were lost. After Axis forces began withdrawing on November 2, Montgomery sent armor sweeping around behind them, and two days later Rommel's escape road was blocked; yet somehow he slipped his forces around the barrier. Sudden, heavy rains that bogged down vehicles in mud were all, according to Montgomery, that saved his foe from annihilation. The R.A.F. constantly bombed Rommel; Montgomery's armor slashed at his columns. Rommel abandoned every non-essential, including his Italian infantry. His route was littered with burned-out vehicles and other debris of war. The Nazi leader had no choice but to try to continue his retreat some one thousand miles until he could link up with German forces in Tunisia and with them turn on Montgomery- and on the American forces newly landed in North Africa."

"Rommel was a military phenomenon that can occur only at rare intervals; men of such bravery and daring survive only with exceptional fortune. He was as brave on the battlefield as Ney, with much better brains; as dashing as Murat, with better balance; as cool and as quick a tactician as Wellington."

"Anybody who came under the spell of his personality turned into a real soldier. However tough the strain he seemed inexhaustible. He seemed to know just what the enemy were like and how they would probably react. His plans were often startling, instinctive, spontaneous and not infrequently obscure."

"The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa."

"Light and matter are both single entities, and the apparent duality arises in the limitations of our language. It is not surprising that our language should be incapable of describing the processes occurring within the atoms, for, as has been remarked, it was invented to describe the experiences of daily life, and these consist only of processes involving exceedingly large numbers of atoms. Furthermore, it is very difficult to modify our language so that it will be able to describe these atomic processes, for words can only describe things of which we can form mental pictures, and this ability, too, is a result of daily experience. Fortunately, mathematics is not subject to this limitation, and it has been possible to invent a mathematical scheme — the quantum theory — which seems entirely adequate for the treatment of atomic processes; for visualisation, however, we must content ourselves with two incomplete analogies — the wave picture and the corpuscular picture."

"Every experiment destroys some of the knowledge of the system which was obtained by previous experiments."

"Quantum theory provides us with a striking illustration of the fact that we can fully understand a connection though we can only speak of it in images and parables."

"An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them."

"One evening I reached the point where I was ready to determine the individual terms in the energy table, or, as we put it today, in the energy matrix, by what would now be considered an extremely clumsy series of calculations. When the first terms seemed to accord with the energy principle, I became rather excited, and I began to make countless arithmetical errors. As a result, it was almost three o'clock in the morning before the final result of my computations lay before me. The energy principle had held for all terms, and I could no longer doubt the mathematical consistency and coherence of the kind of quantum mechanics to which my calculations pointed. At first, I was deeply alarmed. I had the feeling that, through the surface of atomic phenomena, I was looking at a strangely beautiful interior, and I felt almost giddy at the thought that I now had to probe this wealth of mathematical structures nature had so generously spread out before me. I was far too excited to sleep, and so, as a new day dawned, I made for the southern tip of the island, where I had been longing to climb a rock jutting out into the sea. I now did so without too much trouble, and waited for the sun to rise."

"In general, scientific progress calls for no more than the absorption and elaboration of new ideas — and this is a call most scientists are happy to heed."

"The problem of values is nothing but the problem of our acts, goals and morals. It concerns the compass by which we must steer our ship if we are to set a true course through life. The compass itself has been given different names by various religions and philosophies: happiness, the will of God, the meaning of life-to mention just a few. The differences in the names reflect profound differences in the awareness of different human groups. I have no wish to belittle these differences, but I have the clear impression that all such formulations try to express man's relatedness to a central order."

"Can you, or anyone else, reach the central order of things or events, whose existence seems beyond doubt, as directly as you can reach the soul of another human being? I am using the term 'soul' quite deliberately so as not to be misunderstood. If you put your question like that, I would say yes. ... the word 'soul' refers to the central order, to the inner core of a being whose outer manifestations may be highly diverse and pass our understanding."

"There is a fundamental error in separating the parts from the whole, the mistake of atomizing what should not be atomized. Unity and complementarity constitute reality."

"After these conversations with Tagore some of the ideas that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense. That was a great help for me."

"I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language."

"If nature leads us to mathematical forms of great simplicity and beauty—by forms I am referring to coherent systems of hypothesis, axioms, etc.—to forms that no one has previously encountered, we cannot help thinking that they are "true," that they reveal a genuine feature of nature. It may be that these forms also cover our subjective relationship to nature, that they reflect elements of our own thought economy. But the mere fact that we could never have arrived at these forms by ourselves, that they were revealed to us by nature, suggests strongly that they must be part of reality itself, not just of our thoughts about reality. ... You must have felt this too: The almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of relationships which nature suddenly spreads out before us and for which none of us was in the least prepared."

"Of course, we all know that our own reality depends on the structure of our consciousness; we can objectify no more than a small part of our world. But even when we try to probe into the subjective realm, we cannot ignore the central order…In the final analysis, the central order, or 'the one' as it used to be called and with which we commune in the language of religion, must win out."

"The great scientific contribution in theoretical physics that has come from Japan since the last war may be an indication of a certain relationship between philosophical ideas in the tradition of the Far East and the philosophical substance of quantum theory."

"After a great war, history is written by the victors and legends develop which glorify them."

"If one finds a difficulty in a calculation which is otherwise quite convincing, one should not push the difficulty away; one should rather try to make it the centre of the whole thing."

"I was lucky enough to look over the good Lord's shoulder while He was at work."

"If nature leads us to mathematical forms of great simplicity and beauty... that no one has previously encountered, we cannot help thinking that they are "true", that they reveal a genuine feature of nature... You must have felt this too: the almost frightening simplicity and wholeness of the relationships which nature suddenly spreads out before us and for which none of us was in the least prepared."

"The interest of research workers has frequently been focused on the phenomenon of regularly shaped crystals suddenly forming from a liquid, e.g. a supersaturated salt solution. According to the atomic theory the forming force in this process is to a certain extent the symmetry characteristic of the solution to Schrödinger's wave equation, and to that extent crystallization is explained by the atomic theory. Nevertheless this process retains a statistical and — one might almost say — historical element which cannot be further reduced: even when the state of the liquid is completely known before crystallization, the shape of the crystal is not determined by the laws of quantum mechanics. The formation of regular shapes is just far more probable than that of a shapeless lump. But the ultimate shape owes its genesis partly to an element of chance which in principle cannot be analysed further."

"However the development proceeds in detail, the path so far traced by the quantum theory indicates that an understanding of those still unclarified features of atomic physics can only be acquired by foregoing visualization and objectification to an extent greater than that customary hitherto. We have probably no reason to regret this, because the thought of the great epistemological difficulties with which the visual atom concept of earlier physics had to contend gives us the hope that the abstracter atomic physics developing at present will one day fit more harmoniously into the great edifice of Science."

"We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning."

"The atoms in the philosophy of do not move merely by chance. Leucippus seems to have believed in complete determinism, since he is known to have said: "Naught happens for nothing, but everything from a ground and of necessity." The atomists did not give any reason for the original motion of the atoms, which just shows that they thought of a causal description of the atomic motion; causality can only explain later events by earlier events, but it can never explain the beginning."

"In the philosophy of Democritus the atoms are eternal and indestructible units of matter, they can never be transformed into each other. With regard to this question modern physics takes a definite stand against the materialism of Democritus and for Plato and the Pythagoreans. The elementary particles are certainly not eternal and indestructible units of matter, they can actually be transformed into each other. As a matter of fact, if two such particles, moving through space with a very high kinetic energy, collide, then many new elementary particles may be created from the available energy and the old particles may have disappeared in the collision. Such events have been frequently observed and offer the best proof that all particles are made of the same substance: energy."

"But the resemblance of the modern views to those of Plato and the Pythagoreans can be carried somewhat further. The elementary particles in Plato's Timaeus are finally not substance but mathematical forms. "All things are numbers" is a sentence attributed to Pythagoras. The only mathematical forms available at that time were such geometric forms as the regular solids or the triangles which form their surface. In modern quantum theory there can be no doubt that the elementary particles will finally also be mathematical forms but of a much more complicated nature."

"The Greek philosophers thought of static forms and found them in the regular solids. Modern science, however, has from its beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries started from the dynamic problem. The constant element in physics since Newton is not a configuration or a geometrical form, but a dynamic law."

"The equation of motion holds at all times, it is in this sense eternal, whereas the geometrical forms, like the orbits, are changing. Therefore, the mathematical forms that represent the elementary particles will be solutions of some eternal law of motion for matter. Actually this is a problem which has not yet been solved."

"There is an enormous difference between modern science and Greek philosophy, and that is just the empiristic attitude... Since the time of Galileo and Newton, modern science has been based upon a detailed study of nature and upon the postulate that only such statements should be made, as have been verified or at least can be verified by experiment. The idea that one can single out some events from nature by an experiment... to find out what is the constant law in the continuous change, did not occur to the Greek philosophers. Therefore, modern science has from its beginning stood on a much more modest, but at the same time much firmer, basis than ancient philosophy. Therefore, the statements of modern physics are in some way meant much more seriously than the statements of Greek philosophy."

"[I]n the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory we can indeed proceed without mentioning ourselves as individuals, but we cannot disregard the fact that natural science is formed by men. Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves; it describes nature as exposed to our nature of questioning. This was a possibility of which Descartes could not have thought, but it makes a sharp separation between the world and the I impossible. If one follows the great difficulty which even eminent scientists like Einstein had in understanding and accepting the Copenhagen interpretation... one can trace the roots... to the Cartesian partition....it will take a long time for it [this partition] to be replaced by a really different attitude toward the problem of reality."

"Modern positivism...expresses criticism against the naïve use of certain terms... by the general postulate that the question whether a given sentence has any meaning... should always be thoroughly and critically examined. This... is derived from mathematical logic. The procedure of natural science is pictured as an attachment of symbols to the phenomena. The symbols can, as in mathematics, be combined according to certain rules... However, a combination of symbols that does not comply with the rules is not wrong but conveys no meaning. The obvious difficulty in this argument is the lack of any general criterion as to when a sentence should be considered meaningless. A definite decision is possible only when the sentence belongs to a closed system of concepts and axioms, which in the development of natural science will be rather the exception than the rule. In some case the conjecture that a certain sentence is meaningless has historically led to important progress... new connections which would have been impossible if the sentence had a meaning. An example... sentence: "In which orbit does the electron move around the nucleus?" But generally the positivistic scheme taken from mathematical logic is too narrow in a description of nature which necessarily uses words and concepts that are only vaguely defined."

"The words "position" and "velocity" of an electron... seemed perfectly well defined... and in fact they were clearly defined concepts within the mathematical framework of Newtonian mechanics. But actually they were not well defined, as seen from the relations of uncertainty. One may say that regarding their position in Newtonian mechanics they were well defined, but in their relation to nature, they were not. This shows that we can never know beforehand which limitations will be put on the applicability of certain concepts by the extension of our knowledge into the remote parts of nature, into which we can only penetrate with the most elaborate tools. Therefore, in the process of penetration we are bound sometimes to use our concepts in a way which is not justified and which carries no meaning. Insistence on the postulate of complete logical clarification would make science impossible. We are reminded... of the old wisdom that one who insists on never uttering an error must remain silent."

"The law of causality is no longer applied in quantum theory and the law of conservation of matter is no longer true for the elementary particles. Obviously Kant could not have foreseen the new discoveries, but since he was convinced that his concepts would be "the basis of any future metaphysics that can be called science" it is interesting to see where his arguments have been wrong."

"Any concepts or words which have been formed in the past through the interplay between the world and ourselves are not really sharply defined with respect to their meaning: that is to say, we do not know exactly how far they will help us in finding our way in the world. We often know that they can be applied to a wide range of inner or outer experience, but we practically never know precisely the limits of their applicability. This is true even of the simplest and most general concepts like "existence" and "space and time". Therefore, it will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth. The concepts may, however, be sharply defined with regard to their connections. This is actually the fact when the concepts become part of a system of axioms and definitions which can be expressed consistently by a mathematical scheme. Such a group of connected concepts may be applicable to a wide field of experience and will help us to find our way in this field. But the limits of the applicability will in general not be known, at least not completely."

"[S]ets of concepts... defined in physics. ...[F]our systems... have ...attained ...final form. The first ...Newtonian mechanics ...for the description of all mechanical systems, ...motion of fluids and ...elastic ..; it comprises , , aerodynamics. The second closed system of concepts... the theory of heat. Though... connected with mechanics through... statistical mechanics, it... [is] not... a part of mechanics. ...[T]he phenomenological theory of heat uses ...[some] concepts that have no [physics] counterpart ...like: , specific heat, entropy, free energy, etc. ...[F]rom ...phenomenological ...to a statistical interpretation ...considering heat as energy, distributed statistically among ...many degrees of freedom due to ...atomic structure... heat is no more connected with mechanics than with electrodynamics or other ...physics. The central concept ...is ...probability, closely connected with ...entropy ...Besides this ...the statistical theory of heat requires the concept of energy. But any coherent set ...in physics will ...contain ...concepts of energy, and and the law that these ...be conserved. This follows if the ...set is ...to describe ...features ...correct at all times and everywhere; ...[i.e.,] features that do not depend on space and time ...[i.e.,] are invariant under arbitrary translations in space and time, rotations in space and the Galileo— or Lorentz—transformation. Therefore, the theory of heat can be combined with any of the other closed systems of concepts. The third... electricity and magnetism... reached... final form... through... Lorentz, Einstein and Minkowski. It comprises electrodynamics, special relativity, optics, magnetism, and one may include the de Broglie theory of s of all different sorts of elementary particles, but not the wave theory of Schrodinger. [F]ourth... the quantum theory... Its central concept is the probability function, or... "statistical matrix"... It comprises quantum and wave mechanics, the theory of atomic spectra, chemistry, and the theory of other properties... like electric conductivity, , etc. ...The first set is contained in the third as the limiting case where the velocity of light can be considered as infinitely big, and is contained in the fourth as the limiting case where of action can be considered as infinitely small. The first and partly the third set belong to the fourth as a priori for the description of the experiments. The second set can be connected with any of the other three sets without difficulty and is especially important in its connection with the fourth. The independent existence of the third and fourth sets suggests the existence of a fifth set, of which one, three, and four are limiting cases. This fifth set will probably be found someday in connection with the theory of the elementary particles."

"The way in which the convergent mathematical schemes did not fulfill the requirements of relativity and quantum theory was... interesting. ...[O]ne scheme ...interpreted in terms of actual events in space and time, led to a...time reversal... The physicists are convinced... that the processes... do not occur in nature... if... separated by measurable distance in space and time. ...If we assume that the laws of nature do contain a third universal constant... of the order of 10-13 cm, then... our usual concepts... apply only to regions in space and time that are large compared to the universal constant. We should... be prepared for phenomena of a qualitatively new character when we... approach regions... smaller than the nuclear radii. The phenomenon of time reversal... might therefore belong to these smallest regions."

"[E]ven in the most precise part of science, in mathematics, we cannot avoid using concepts that involve contradictions. ...[I]t is well known that the concept of infinity leads to contradictions... but it would be practically impossible to construct... mathematics without this concept."

"The existing scientific concepts cover always only a very limited part of reality, and the other part that has not yet been understood is infinite."

"Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word "understanding.""

"The physicist may be satisfied when he has the mathematical scheme and knows how to use for the interpretation of the experiments. But he has to speak about his results also to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in plain language. Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached."

"I remember discussions with Bohr which went through many hours till very late at night and ended almost in despair; and when at the end of the discussion I went alone for a walk in the neighbouring park I repeated to myself again and again the question: Can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?"

"[U]ncomprimising belief carries much more weight than some special philosophical notions... [T]he great majority... can scarcely have any well-founded judgement concerning the correctness of certain important general ideas or doctrines. ...[T]he word "belief" can for this majority not mean "perceiving the truth of something" but... only... as "taking this as the basis for life." ...[T]his second kind of belief is much firmer... much more fixed... it can persist even against immediate contradicting experience... not... shaken by added scientific knowledge... sometimes... to the point where it seems completely absurd, and ends... only with the death of the believer. Science and history can teach us that this... may become a great danger... [S]uch belief has always belonged to the great forces in human history."

"Cautious deliberation based on purely rational arguments can save us from many errors and dangers. ...But ...there will always be a fundamental complementarity between deliberation and decision. ...The decision finally... pushing away all the arguments... The decision may be the result of deliberation, but it is... complementary... it excludes deliberation. Even the most important decisions... contain this inevitable element of irrationality. ...[I]t cannot be avoided that some real or apparent truth form the basis of life; and this fact should be acknowledged with regard to those groups... whose basis is different from our own."

"[F]rom all that has been said about modern science... modern physics is just one... but... characteristic, part of a general historical process... toward a unification and a widening of our... world. This... would... lead to a diminution of... cultural and political tensions that create the great danger... But... forces in the existing cultural communities... try to ensure for their traditional values the largest... role in the final state of unification... and thereby adds to the instability of the transient state. Modern physics... shows that the use of arms... would be disastrous, and... through it openness for all... concepts it raises the hope that in the final state of unification many different cultural traditions may live together and... combine different human endeavors into a new... balance between thought and deed, between activity and meditation."

"Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them."

"Reality is in the observations, not in the electron."

"I am the one who knocks."

"The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for her."

"Heisenberg's name will always be associated with his theory of quantum mechanics, published in 1925, when he was only 23 years old. For this theory and the applications of it which resulted especially in the discovery of allotropic forms of hydrogen, Heisenberg was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for 1932. His new theory was based only on what can be observed, that is to say, on the radiation emitted by the atom. We cannot, he said, always assign to an electron a position in space at a given time, nor follow it in its orbit, so that we cannot assume that the planetary orbits postulated by Niels Bohr actually exist. Mechanical quantities, such as position, velocity, etc. should be represented, not by ordinary numbers, but by abstract mathematical structures called "matrices" and he formulated his new theory in terms of matrix equations."

"When he arrived he looked like a simple peasant boy, with short, fair hair, clear bright eyes and a charming expression. He took his duties as an assistant more seriously than Pauli and was a great help to me. His incredible quickness and acuteness of apprehension has always enabled him to do a colossal amount of work without much effort; he finished his hydrodynamic thesis, worked on atomic problems partly alone, partly in collaboration with me, and helped me to direct my research students."

"In 1929, Heisenberg spent some time in India as the guest of the celebrated Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore, with whom he had long conversations about science and Indian philosophy. This introduction to Indian thought brought Heisenberg great comfort, he told me. He began to see that the recognition of relativity, interconnectedness, and impermanence as fundamental aspects of physical reality, which had been so difficult for himself and his fellow physicists, was the very basis of the Indian spiritual traditions. “After these conversations with Tagore,” he said, “some of the ideas that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense. That was a great help for me.”"

"We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point, as if new, it may still take our breath away. Come... dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg. Come, dry your eyes. And let's go home."

"Heisenberg in cattedra / spiegava il Principio di indeterminazione / a una platea di eletti. / In un angolo Fermi e Dirac / si guardarono un attimo sbigottiti / poi si scambiarono brevi formule / scritte sui palmi delle mani"

"In 1925, the world view of physics was a model of a great machine composed of separable interacting material particles. During the next few years, Schrodinger and Heisenberg and their followers created a universe based on superimposed inseparable waves of probability amplitudes. This new view would be entirely consistent with the Vedantic concept of All in One."

"From 1946 onward, as Germany's leading physicist, he had two disappointments. His efforts to bring scientists into government failed, and his scientific work, offering suggestions for a new unified field theory, was not generally accepted."

"J. Robert Oppenheimer: You're talking about turning theory into a practical weapons system faster than the Nazis. Leslie Groves: Who have a twelve month head start. J. Robert Oppenheimer: Eighteen. Leslie Groves: How could you possibly know that? J. Robert Oppenheimer: Our fast neutron research took six months. The man they've undoubtedly put in charge will have made that leap instantly. Leslie Groves: Who do you think they put in charge? J. Robert Oppenheimer: Werner Heisenberg. He has the most intuitive understanding of atomic structure I've ever seen. Leslie Groves: You know his work? J. Robert Oppenheimer: I know him. Just like I know Walter Bothe, von Weizsäcker, Diebner... In a straight race, the Germans win. We've got one hope. Leslie Groves: Which is? J. Robert Oppenheimer: Antisemitism. Leslie Groves: What? J. Robert Oppenheimer: Hitler called quantum physics "Jewish science", said it right to Einstein's face. Our one hope is that Hitler is so, so blinded by hate that he's denied Heisenberg proper resources, because it'll take vast resources."

"Your Yes to God demands your No to all injustice, to all evil, to all lies, to all oppression and violation of the weak and the poor, to all godlessness and mocking of the holy. Your Yes to God demands a brave No to everything that will ever hinder you from serving God alone, whether it be your profession, your property, your house, your honor before the world. Faith means decision."

"Time is the most precious gift in our possession, for it is the most irrevocable. This is what makes it so disturbing to look back upon the time which we have lost. Time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering. Time lost is time not filled, time left empty."

"How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know."

"We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God… It is a strange fact that Christians and even ministers frequently consider their work so important and urgent that they will allow nothing to disturb them. They think they are doing God a service in this but actually they are disdaining God’s “crooked but straight path”. It is part of the discipline of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform service and that we do not assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God."

"Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting to-day for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using and spending it are infinite. What would grace be if it were not cheap?"

"Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian "conception" of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins. The church which holds the correct doctrine of grace has, it is supposed, ipso facto a part of that grace. In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God. Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before."

"Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all he has. It is the pearl of great price to by which the merchant will sell all his goods."

"Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner."

"God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God. Costly grace is the sanctuary of God; it has to be protected from the world, and not thrown to the dogs. It is therefore the living word, the Word of God, which he speaks as it pleases him. Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: "My yoke is easy and my burden is light.""

"Should the church be trying to erect a spiritual reign of terror over people by threatening earthly and eternal punishment on its own authority and commanding everything a person must believe and do to be saved? Should the church's word bring new tyranny and violent abuse to human souls? It may be that some people yearn for such servitude. But could the church ever serve such a longing? When holy scripture speaks of following Jesus, it proclaims that people are free from all human rules, from everything which presumes, burdens, or causes worry and torment of conscience. In following Jesus, people are released from the hard yoke of their own laws to be under the gentle yoke of Jesus Christ. … Jesus' commandment never wishes to destroy life, but rather to preserve, strengthen, and heal life."

"Cheap grace means justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. … Well, then, let the Christian live like the rest of the world, let him model himself on the world’s standards in every sphere of life, and not presumptuously aspire to live a different life under grace from his old life under sin. That was the heresy of the enthusiasts, the Anabaptists and their kind. … Let him live like the rest of the world! Of course he would like to go and do something extraordinary, and it does demand a good deal of self-restraint to refrain from the attempt and content himself with living as the world lives. Yet it is imperative for the Christian to achieve renunciation, to practice self-effacement."

"As Christianity spread, and the Church became more secularized, this realization of the costliness of grace gradually faded. The world was Christianized, and grace became its common property. It was to be had at low cost. Yet the Church of Rome did not altogether lose the earlier vision. It is highly significant that the Church was astute enough to find room for the monastic movement … Thus monasticism became a living protest against the secularization of Christianity and the cheapening of grace. … Monasticism was represented as an individual achievement which the mass of the laity could not be expected to emulate. By thus limiting the application of the commandments of Jesus to a restricted group of specialists, the Church evolved the fatal conception of the double standard."

"The call to the cloister demanded of Luther the complete surrender of his life. But God shattered all his hopes. He showed him through the Scriptures that the following of Christ is not the achievement or merit of a select few, but the divine command to all Christians without distinction. Monasticism had transformed the humble work of discipleship into the meritorious activity of the saints, and the self-renunciation of discipleship into the flagrant spiritual self-assertion of the "religious.""

"The outcome of the Reformation was the victory, not of Luther's perception of grace in all its purity and costliness, but of the vigilant religious instinct of man for the place where grace is to be obtained at the cheapest price."

"The antithesis between the Christian life and the life of bourgeois respectability is at an end. The Christian life comes to mean nothing more than living in the world and as the world, in being no different from the world, in fact, in being prohibited from being different from the world for the sake of grace. The upshot of it all is that my only duty as a Christian is to leave the world for an hour or so on a Sunday morning and go to church to be assured that my sins are all forgiven. I need no longer try to follow Christ, for cheap grace, the bitterest foe of discipleship, which true discipleship must loathe and detest, has freed me from that."

"At the end of a life spent in the pursuit of knowledge Faust has to confess: "I now see that we can nothing know." That is the answer to a sum, it is the outcome of a long experience. But as Kierkegaard observed, it is quite a different thing when a freshman comes up to the university and uses the same sentiment to justify his indolence. As the answer to a sum it is perfectly true, but as the initial data it is a piece of self-deception."

"Jesus Christ has to suffer and be rejected. … Suffering and being rejected are not the same. Even in his suffering Jesus could have been the celebrated Christ. Indeed, the entire compassion and admiration of the world could focus on the suffering. Looked upon as something tragic, the suffering could in itself convey its own value, its own honor and dignity. But Jesus is the Christ who was rejected in his suffering. Rejection removed all dignity and honor from his suffering. It had to be dishonorable suffering. Suffering and rejection express in summary form the cross of Jesus. Death on the cross means to suffer and to die as one rejected and cast out. It was by divine necessity that Jesus had to suffer and be rejected. Any attempt to hinder what is necessary is satanic. Even, or especially, if such an attempt comes from the circle of disciples, because it intends to prevent Christ from being Christ. The fact that it is Peter, the rock of the church, who makes himself guilty doing this just after he has confessed Jesus to be the Christ and has been commissioned by Christ, shows that from its very beginning the church has taken offense at the suffering of Christ. It does not want that kind of Lord, and as Christ's church it does not want to be forced to accept the law of suffering from its Lord."

"If any want to become my followers," Jesus says. Following him is not something that is self-evident, even among the disciples. No one can be forced, no one can be expected to follow him. … "If any want to follow me, they must deny themselves … and take up their cross."

"The cross is not random suffering, but necessary suffering. The cross is not suffering that stems from natural existence; it is the suffering that comes from being Christian. … A Christianity that no longer took discipleship seriously remade the gospel into only the solace of cheap grace. Moreover, it drew no line between natural and Christian existence. Such a Christianity had to understand the cross as one's daily misfortune, as the predicament and anxiety of our daily life. Here it has been forgotten that the cross also means being rejected, that the cross includes the shame of suffering. Being shunned, despised, and deserted by people, as in the psalmists unending lament, is an essential feature of the suffering of the cross, which cannot be comprehended by a Christianity that is unable to differentiate between a citizen's ordinary existence and a Christian existence. The cross is suffering with Christ."

"God honors some with great suffering and grants them the grace of martyrdom, while other are not tempted beyond their strength. But in every case it is one cross. It is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering that everyone has to experience is the call which summons us away from our attachments to this world. It is the death of the old self in the encounter with Jesus Christ. Those who enter into discipleship enter into Jesus' death."

"The Cross is not the terrible end of a pious happy life. Instead, it stands at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ. Whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death."

"Jesus' call to bear the cross places all who follow him in the community of the forgiveness of sins. Forgiving sins is the Christ-suffering required of his disciples. It is required of all Christians."

"It was the error of Israel to put the law in God’s place, to make the law their God and their God a law."

"The truthfulness which Jesus demands from his followers is the self-abnegation which does not hide sin. Nothing is then hidden, everything is brought forth to the light of day. In this question of truthfulness, what matters first and last is that a man’s whole being should be exposed, his whole evil laid bare in the sight of God. But sinful men do not like this sort of truthfulness."

"“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” With each beatitude the gulf is widened between the disciples and the people, their call to come forth from the people becomes increasingly manifest. By “mourning” Jesus, of course, means doing without what the world calls peace and prosperity: He means refusing to be in tune with the world or to accommodate oneself to its standards. Such men mourn for the world, for its guilt, its fate, and its fortune."

"A community of Jesus which seeks to hide itself has ceased to follow him. “Neither do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on the stand.” … The bushel may be the fear of men, or perhaps deliberate conformity to the world for some ulterior motive."

"“Reformation theology” … pretends to prefer to Pharasaic ostentation a modest invisibility, which in practice means conformity to the world. When that happens, the hallmark of the Church becomes justitia civilis instead of extraordinary visibility. The very failure of the light to shine becomes the touchstone of our Christianity."

"The right way to requite evil, according to Jesus, is not to resist it. This saying of Christ removes the Church from the sphere of politics and law. The Church is not to be a national community like the old Israel, but a community of believers without political or national ties. The old Israel had been both — the chosen people of God and a national community, and it was therefore his will that they should meet force with force. But with the Church it is different: it has abandoned political and national status, and therefore it must patiently endure aggression. Otherwise evil will be heaped upon evil. Only thus can fellowship be established and maintained. At this point it becomes evident that when a Christian meets with injustice, he no longer clings to his rights and defends them at all costs. He is absolutely free from possessions and bound to Christ alone. Again, his witness to this exclusive adherence to Jesus creates the only workable basis for fellowship, and leaves the aggressor for him to deal with. The only way to overcome evil is to let it run itself to a stand-still because it does not find the resistance it is looking for. Resistance merely creates further evil and adds fuel to the flames. But when evil meets no opposition and encounters no obstacle but only patient endurance, its sting is drawn, and at last it meets an opponent which is more than its match. Of course this can only happen when the last ounce of resistance is abandoned, and the renunciation of revenge is complete. Then evil cannot find its mark, it can breed no further evil, and is left barren."

"By willing endurance we cause suffering to pass. Evil becomes a spent force when we put up no resistance. By refusing to pay back the enemy with his own coin, and preferring to suffer without resistance, the Christian exhibits the sinfulness of contumely and insult. Violence stands condemned by its failure to evoke counter-violence."

"By his willingly renouncing self-defence, the Christian affirms his absolute adherence to Jesus, and his freedom from the tyranny of his own ego. The exclusiveness of this adherence is the only power which can overcome evil."

"Jesus bluntly calls the evil person evil. If I am assailed, I am not to condone or justify aggression. Patient endurance of evil does not mean a recognition of its rights. That is sheer sentimentality, and Jesus will have nothing to do with it. The shameful assault, the deed of violence and the act of exploitation are still evil. … The very fact that the evil which assaults him is unjustifiable makes it imperative that he should not resist it, but play it out and overcome it by patiently enduring the evil person. Suffering willingly endured is stronger than evil, it spells death to evil."

"Jesus is no draughtsman of political blueprints, he is the one who vanquished evil through suffering. It looked as though evil had triumphed on the cross, but the real victory belonged to Jesus. And the cross is the only justification for the precept of non-violence, for it alone can kindle a faith in the victory over evil which will enable men to obey that precept. And only such obedience is blessed with the promise that we shall be partakers of Christ's victory as well as his sufferings."

"The passion of Christ is the victory of divine love over the powers of evil, and therefore it is the only supportable basis for Christian obedience. Once again, Jesus calls those who follow him to share his passion. How can we convince the world by our preaching of the passion when we shrink from that passion in our own lives? On the cross Jesus fulfilled the law he himself established and thus graciously keeps his disciples in the fellowship of his suffering."

"Distinction between person and office is wholly alien to the teaching of Jesus. He says nothing about that. He addresses his disciples as men who have left all to follow him, and the precept of non-violence applies equally to private life and official duty. He is the Lord of all life, and demands undivided allegiance."

"The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that men should defeat their enemies by loving them."

"In the New Testament our enemies are those who harbor hostility against us, not those against whom we cherish hostility. For Jesus refuses to reckon with such a possibility."

"By our enemies Jesus means those who are quite intractable and utterly unresponsive to our love."

"Christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another, except that the more bitter our enemy’s hatred, the greater his need of love. Be his enmity political or religious, he has nothing to expect from a follower of Jesus but unqualified love. In such love there is no inner discord between private person and official capacity. In both we are disciples of Christ, or we are not Christians at all."

"The disciples realized that they too were his enemies, and that he had overcome them by his love. It is this that opens the disciple’s eyes, and enables him to see his enemy as a brother."

"The πξρισσον [extraordinary] never merges into the το αυτο [merely personal]. That was the fatal mistake of the false Protestant ethic which diluted Christian love into patriotism, loyalty to friends, and industriousness, which in short, perverted the better righteousness into justitia civilis."

"From whom are we to hide the visibility of our discipleship? Certainly not from other men, for we are told to let them see our light. No. We are to hide it from ourselves. Our task is simply to keep on following, looking only to our Leader who goes on before, taking no notice of ourselves or of what we are doing."

"The sword wherewith they judge their brethren will fall upon their own heads. Instead of cutting themselves off from the brother as the just from the unjust, they find themselves cut off from Jesus."

"When we judge other people we confront them in a spirit of detachment, observing and reflecting as it were from the outside. But love has neither time nor opportunity for this. If we love, we can never observe the other person with detachment, for he is always and at every moment a living claim to our love and service."

"Love for the sinner is ominously close to love of the sin. But the love of Christ for the sinner in itself is the condemnation of sin."

"To everyone God is the kind of God he believes in."

"By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which other are just as entitled to as we are."

"If when we judged others, our real motive was to destroy evil, we should look for evil where it is certain to be found, and that is in our own hearts. But if we are on the look-out for evil in others, our real motive is obviously to justify ourselves."

"Jesus offers his disciples a simple rule of thumb which will enable even the least sophisticated of them to tell whether his intercourse with others is on the right lines or not. All he need do is to say “I” instead of “Thou,” and put himself in the other man’s place."

"To be conformed with the one who became human means that we may be the human beings that we really are. Pretension, hypocrisy, compulsion, forcing oneself to be something different, better, more ideal than one is - all are abolished. God loves the real human being. God became a real human being."

"Bodily life, which we receive through no action of our own, intrinsically bears the right to its preservation. This is not a right that we have stolen or earned for ourselves; it is in the truest sense a right that is “born with us.”"

"Catholic moral theology ... eliminates the unnaturalness of contraception, but replaces this with the unnaturalness of a marriage without bodily communion."

"The great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, historical necessity or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible, it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil. The "reasonable" people's failure is obvious. With the best intentions and a naive lack of realism, they think that with a little reason they can bend back into position the framework that has got out of joint. In their lack of vision they want to do justice to all sides, and so the conflicting forces wear them down with nothing achieved. Disappointed by the world's unreasonableness, they see themselves condemned to ineffectiveness; they step aside in resignation or collapse before the stronger party. Still more pathetic is the total collapse of moral fanaticism. Fanatics think that their single-minded principles qualify them to do battle with the powers of evil; but like a bull they rush at the red cloak instead of the person who is holding it; they exhaust themselves and are beaten. They get entangled in non-essentials and fall into the trap set by cleverer people."

"Then there is the man with a conscience, who fights single-handedly against heavy odds in situations that call for a decision."

"Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God — the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God. Where are these responsible people?"

"What lies behind the complaint about the dearth of civil courage? In recent years we have seen a great deal of bravery and self-sacrifice, but civil courage hardly anywhere, even among ourselves. To attribute this simply to personal cowardice would be too facile a psychology; its background is quite different. In a long history, we Germans have had to learn the need for and the strength of obedience. In the subordination of all personal wishes and ideas to the tasks to which we have been called, we have seen the meaning and greatness of our lives. We have looked upwards, not in servile fear, but in free trust, seeing in our tasks a call, and in our call a vocation. This readiness to follow a command from "above" rather than our own private opinions and wishes was a sign of legitimate self-distrust. Who would deny that in obedience, in their task and calling, the Germans have again and again shown the utmost bravery and self-sacrifice? But the German has kept his freedom — and what nation has talked more passionately of freedom than the Germans, from Luther to the idealist philosophers? — by seeking deliverance from self-will through service to the community. Calling and freedom were to him two sides of the same thing. But in this he misjudged the world; he did not realize that his submissiveness and self-sacrifice could be exploited for evil ends. When that happened, the exercise of the calling itself became questionable, and all the moral principles of the German were bound to totter. The fact could not be escaped that the Germans still lacked something fundamental: he could not see the need for free and responsible action, even in opposition to the task and his calling; in its place there appeared on the one hand an irresponsible lack of scruple, and on the other a self-tormenting punctiliousness that never led to action. Civil courage, in fact, can grow only out of the free responsibility of free men. Only now are the Germans beginning to discover the meaning of free responsibility. It depends on a God who demands responsible action in a bold venture of faith, and who promises forgiveness and consolation to the man who becomes a sinner in that venture."

"Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous."

"One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless."

"Neither protest nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradicts one's prejudgment simply need to be believed — in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical — and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental."

"Greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one."

"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remoreseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?"

"There remains an experience of incomparable value. We have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated — in short, from the perspective of those who suffer."

"Nicht aus dem schweren Boden wo Blut und Geschlecht und Schwur mächtig und heilig sind, wo die Erde selbst gegen Wahnsinn und die geweihten heilgen uralten Ordnungen hütet und schützt und rächt, — nicht aus dem schweren Boden der Erde, sondern aus freiem Gefallen und freiem Verlangen des Geistes, der nicht des Eides und des Gesetzes bedarf, wird der Freund dem Freunde geschenkt."

"Beside the staff of life, taken and fashioned from the heavy earth, beside our marriage, work, and war the free man, too, will live and grow towards the sun. Not the ripe fruit alone — blossom is lovely, too. Does blossom only serve the fruit, or does fruit only serve the blossom — who knows? But both are given to us."

"When the spirit touches man's heart and brow with thoughts that are lofty, bold, serene, so that with clear eyes he will face the world as a free man may; when the spirit gives birth to action by which alone we stand or fall; when from the sane and resolute action rises the workd that gives a a man's life content and meaning — then would that many, lonely and actively working, know of the spirit that grasps and befriends him..."

"Sickened by vermin that feed, in the shade of the good, on envy, greed, and suspicion, by the snake-like hissing of venomous tongues that fear hate and revile the mystery of free thought and upright heart The spirit would cast aside all deceit, open his heart to the spirit he trusts, and unite with him freely as one."

"Man seeks, in his manhood, not orders, not laws and peremptory dogmas, but counsel from one who is earnest in goodness and faithful in friendship, making man free."

"Distant or near, in joy or in sorrow, each in the other sees his true helper to brotherly freedom."

"What is the "extraordinary"? It is the love of Jesus Christ himself, love that goes to the cross in suffering obedience. It is the cross. The peculiar feature of Christian life is precisely this cross, a cross enabling Christians to go beyond the world, as it were, thereby granting them victory over the world. Suffering encountered in the love of the one who is crucified — that is the "extraordinary" in Christian existence. The Extraordinary is without doubt that visible element over which the Father in heaven is praised. It cannot remain hidden; people must see it."

"The activity will prove to be "peculiar" by leading the active person into Christ's own passion. This activity itself is perpetual suffering and enduring. In it, Christ is suffered by his disciple. If this is not the case, it is not the activity Jesus intended. In this way, the "extraordinary" is the fulfilling of the law, the keeping of the commandments."

"Before Jesus leads His disciples into suffering, humiliation, disgrace, and disdain, He summons them and shows Himself to them as the Lord in God's glory. Before the disciples must descend with Jesus into the abyss of human guilt, malice, and hatred, Jesus leads them to a high mountain from which they are to receive help. Before Jesus' face is beaten and spat upon, before his cloak is torn and splattered with blood, the disciples are to see Him in his divine glory. His face shines like the face of God and light is the garment he wears."

"We want Jesus as the visibly resurrected one, as the splendid, transfigured Jesus. We want his visible power and glory, and we no longer want to return to the cross, to believing against all appearances, to suffering in faith … it is good here... let us make dwellings. … The disciples are not allowed to do this. God's glory comes quite near in the radiant cloud of God's presence, and the Father's voice says: "This is my beloved son; listen to him!" … There is no abiding in and enjoying his visible glory here. Whoever recognizes the transfigured Jesus, whoever recognizes Jesus as God, must also immediately recognize Him as the crucified human being, and should hear him, obey him. Luther's vision of Christ: "the crucified Lord!" … Now the disciples are overcome by fear. Now they comprehend what is going on. They were, after all, still in the world, unable to bear such glory. They sinned against God's glory."

"Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God’s will."

"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act."

"For Bonhoeffer, the foundation of ethical behaviour lay in how the reality of the world and the reality of God were reconciled in the reality of Christ. Both in his thinking and in his life, ethics were centered on the demand for action by responsible men and women in the face of evil. He was sharply critical of ethical theory and of academic concerns with ethical systems precisely because of their failure to confront evil directly. Evil, he asserted, was concrete and specific, and it could be combated only by the specific actions of responsible people in the world. The uncompromising position Bonhoeffer took in his seminal work Ethics, was directly reflected in his stance against Nazism."

"An unsystematic theologian in the tradition of Søren Kierkegaard who has spoken to successive generations of religiously questing young people is the Nazi-martyred Dietrich Bonhoeffer. At the age of thirty-nine he was executed for his implication in the abortive March 13, 1943 assassination plot on Adolf Hitler. His fragmentary writings have had an astonishing circulation and ready acceptance in many parts of the world. … Bonhoeffer questioned whether the modern church had so obscured the gospel by adding dogmas, burdensome rules, and irrelevant demands that to make a genuine decision for Christ has become extremely difficult, if not impossible … Discipleship, argued Bonhoeffer, means joy, and is not limited to the spiritual elite but is for everyone."

"Bonhoeffer was disinterested in another world, opposed to setting apart so-called religious activities, such as prayer and church-going, from the everyday activities of earning a living or engaging in politics. … Religion if it is to be vital, must lead to the amelioration of social problems."

"When Bonhoeffer comprehended the implications of Nazi policy towards citizens of Jewish origin, he became a convinced advocate of the need to have Hitler removed from office because he was a grotesque caricature of what a German head of state should be. Indeed, for Bonhoeffer Hitler was the agent of the Antichrist. Clearly, his principles for ultimately endorsing tyrannicide were strictly circumscribed and, as such, very different from any of the past English, American, or French revolutionaries in their situation."

"Bonhoeffer was highly critical of the lack of intellectual rigor in Western thought … but becomes through his constructive criticism, and ardent advocate of ecumenism as an instrument that could be employed to advocate peace among nations."

"Bonhoffer offers an insight into friendship. He notes that it is not easy to classify this relationship sociologically, unlike the relationships which derive from, what he refers to as, the divine mandates, namely marriage, work, the state and the church. Because it cannot be classified or defined as such, friendship cannot be protected by the courts or society in general. Rather, friendship develops in freedom, or as Bonhoffer says, friendship appeals to the necessitas of liberty. Friendship is defined by "the binding content between two people." … The Christian's service of God entails service of one's neighbor. The community united in worship is a manifestation of God's presence. In worship we "rehearse" or "act out" what we are to become as God's people, namely "One." Moreover, in a sense we "worship one another," in that we are aware that each member of the community is an image of the living God."

"Cross and resurrection, suffering and the overcoming of death were central themes in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's exegetical and theological work. Again and again during his lifetime … he focused on these themes, trying to disclose their relevance for human life and actions, and to answer the question regarding just what Christian life really is."

"An interim candidate would not make a radical change."

"If we're going to have Kati Witt and 'The G.D.R. Show,' why not have a Nazi-era celebrity introducing 'The Third Reich Show'?"

"It was not a vote for Hohmann or against Merkel - it was a vote for an open society."

"She showed the direction, and the party followed her. It was decisive that Merkel appeared human and credible, thereby winning over the trust of the party members."

"Sie haben Diktatur nicht erlebt, Frau Roth! Wenn sich alle einig sind, bedeutet das noch nicht, dass alle Recht haben!"

"The God who created these fair heavens with the same facility as yon green sapling; he who hath bestowed on man a life of toil, of transient joys and fleeting pains, that he might not forget the higher worth of his enduring soul, and might feel that immortality waited for him beyond the grave;—He, he is one only God!"

"He who has an opinion of his own, but depends upon the opinion and taste of others, is a slave."

"It is … undeniable that no settlement can be just and complete if recognition is not accorded to the right of the Arab refugee to return to the home from which he has been dislodged by the hazards and strategy of the armed conflict between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. The majority of these refugees have come from territory which … was to be included in the . The exodus of Palestinian Arabs resulted from panic created by fighting in their communities, by rumours concerning real or alleged acts of terrorism, or expulsion. It would be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right to return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine, and, indeed, at least offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries."

"The beauty, the spirit of Germany, its sun, moon, stars, rocks, seas and rivers can never be expressed this way.."

"I just stepped out of the dark, still forest and found myself on a rising hill. In front of me I saw a valley, surrounded by fertile hills, in which a town stood and the newly covered slate roof of the tower glowed in the evening light. Through the richly-flowered, carpeted meadow the river meandered.. .And behind the hills lay the mountains.. ..cliff after cliff rose far out into the horizon.. .Filled with soaring joy I stood there a long time and looked at the beautiful area.."

"Gently rising hills block the view into the distance; line the wishes and desires of the children, who enjoy the blissful moments of the present without wanting to know what lies beyond. Bushes in bloom, nourishing herbs, and sweet-smelling flowers surround the quiet clear stream in which the pure blue of the cloudless sky is reflected like the glorious image of God in the souls of the children.. .There is no stone to be seen here, no withered branch, no fallen leaves. The whole of nature breathes, peace, joy, innocence and life."

"Through the gloomy clouds break / Blue sky, sunshine, / On the heights and in the valley / Sing the lark and the nightingale God, I thank you that I live / Not forever in this world / Strengthen me that my soul rise / Upward toward your firmament."

"Alas, the blue arc of heaven / Is covered with gloomy clouds, / And the bright radiance of the sun / Is completely hidden See the terrifying force of the tempest / Bows the oaks so that is groans, / And the rose on the beautiful pasture / has ben bent down by the rain."

"If a painting has a soulful effect on the viewer, if it puts his mind into a soulful mood, then it has fulfilled the first requirement of a work of art. However bad it might be in drawing, color, handling, etc."

"Jesus Christ, nailed to the Cross [in his painting 'Cross in the Mountains (Tetschen Altar)',] is turned to the setting sun, here the image of the totally enlivening Father. With Christ dies the wisdom of the old world, the time when God the Father wandered directly on Earth. This sun set and the world was no longer able to apprehend the departed light. The evening glow shining from the pure noble metal of the golden crucified Christ is reflected in gentle glow to the earth. The Cross stands raised on a rock, unshakably firm, as our faith in Jesus Christ. Around the Cross stand the evergreens, enduring through all seasons, as does the belief of Man in Him, the crucified."

"Why, the question is often asked of me"

"The picture [Friedrich's painting: 'The Cross on the Baltic Sea' ] for your friend has already been sketched out, but there is no church in it, not a single tree or plant, not a blade of grass. On a bare and rocky seashore there stands, high up, the cross - for those who see it that way, a consolation, and for those who don't see it that way, just a cross."

"The divine is everywhere, even in a grain of sand; there I represented it in the reeds."

"I must stay alone and know that I am alone to contemplate and feel nature in full; I have to surrender myself to what encircles me, I have to merge with my clouds and rocks in order to be what I am. Solitude is indispensible for my dialogue with nature."

"Sometimes I try to think and nothing comes out of it; but it happens that I doze off and suddenly feel as though someone is rousing me. I am startled, open my eyes, and what my mind was looking for stands before me like an apparition - at once I seize my pencil to draw; the main thing has been done."

"..the great white blanket of snow [in one of his painting of Cemetery / Church in the Snow, mid-1820's].. ..the essence of the utmost purity, beneath which nature prepares herself for a new life.."

"Just as the reverent man prays without uttering words, and the Lord hears him, the sensitive painter paints, and the sensitive man understands and recognizes him, but even the more obtuse carry away something from his work."

"Man should not be held as an absolute standard for mankind, but the Godly, the infinite is his goal.. .Follow without hesitation the voice of your inner self; for it is the Godly in us and leads us not to astray.."

"The artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees in himself. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also refrain from painting what he sees before him. Otherwise his pictures will be like those folding screens behind which one expects to find only the sick or the dead."

"Close your bodily eye, so that you may see your picture first with the spiritual eye. Then bring to the light of day that which you have seen in the darkness so that it may react upon others from the outside inwards. A picture must not be invented but felt. Observe the form exactly, both the smallest and the large and do not separate the small from the large, but rather the trivial from the important."

"You should keep sacred every impuls of your mind; you should keep sacred every pious sentiment; because that is art in us. In an inspired hour she will appear in a clear form, and this form will be your picture."

"The pure, frank sentiments we hold in our hearts are the only truthful sources of art. A painting which does not take its inspiration from the heart is nothing more than futile juggling. All authentic art is conceived at a sacred moment and nourished in a blessed hour; an inner impulse creates it, often without the artist being aware of it."

"You call me a misanthrope because I avoid society. You err; I love society. Yet in order not to hate people, I must avoid their company."

"The artist's feeling is his law. Genuine feeling can never be contrary to nature; it is always in harmony with her. But another person's feelings should never be imposed on us as law. Spiritual affinity leads to similarity in work, but such affinity is something entirely different from mimicry. Whatever people may say of Y's paintings and how they often resemble Z's, yet they proceed from Y and are his sole property."

"Every truthful work of art must express a definite feeling, must move the spirit of the spectator either to joy or to sadness.. ..rather than try to unite all sensations, as thought mixed together with a twirling stick."

"What pleases us about the older paintings is above all their pious simplicity.. .However, we do not want to become simple as many have done, but rather become pious and imitate their virtues."

"I am far from wanting to resist the demands of my time, except when they are purely a matter of fashion. Instead, I continue to hope that time itself will destroy its own offspring, perhaps quite soon. But I am not so weak as to submit to the demands of the age when they go against my convictions. I spin a cocoon around myself; let others do the same. I shall leave it up to time to show what will come of it: a brilliant butterfly or a maggot."

"People say of such-and-such a painter that he has great command of his brush. Might it not be more correct to say that he is controlled of his brush? Merely for the satisfaction of his vanity, to paint brilliantly and display skill with the brush, he has sacrificed the nobler considerations of naturalness and truth – and thus achieved sorry fame as a brilliant technician."

"In this big moonlit landscape by the painter N.N., that deservedly celebrated technician, one sees more than one would wish, or that can actually be seen by moonlight. But what the perceptive, sensitive soul looks for in every painting, and rightly expects to find, is missing.. ..If that painter could find it in himself to paint fewer, but more deeply-felt, pictures instead of so many clever ones, his contemporaries and posterity would be more grateful to him."

"To many it is incomprehensible that art has to emerge from a person's inner being, 'that it has to do with one's morality, one's religion..'. But so it does. You should trade only in what you recognize to be true and beautiful, noble and good in your soul."

"People are always talking about 'incidentals'; but nothing is incidental in a picture, everything is indispensable to the whole effect, so nothing must be neglected. If a man can give value to the main part of his composition only by negligent treatment of the subordinate portions, his work is in a bad way. Everything must and can be carefully executed, without the different parts obtruding themselves on the eye. The proper subordination of the parts to the whole is not achieved by neglecting incidental features, but by correct grouping and by the distribution of light and shadow."

"It is doubtful whether the artist [unknown] altogether knew what he depicted here in this panel, and even more doubtful whether he could have expressed it in words. That which we praise here as well thought-out and cleverly arranged may, in fact, have been achieved by him unconsciously; for the artist was transformed by pure harmoniousness while executing this picture, and his feeling become his law. Only his disposition, his spiritual exaltation, could have brought forth such a fruit as this picture. Just as the pious man prays without speaking a word and the Almighty hearkens unto him, so the artist with true feeling paints and the sensitive man understands and recognizes it; while even the less sensitive gain some inkling of it."

"When a landscape is enveloped in mist it appears larger, more majestic, and increases the power of imagination.. .The eye and the imagination are on the whole more attracted."

"What the newer landscape artists see in a circle of a hundred degrees in Nature they press together unmercifully into an angle of vision of only forty-five degrees. And furthermore, what is in Nature separated by large spaces, is compressed into a cramped space and overfills and oversatiates the eye, creating an unfavorable and disquieting effect on the viewer."

"We urge the artist [Friedrich] to undertake serious study of antiquity and of nature as the ancients saw it."

"Here is coldness, impetuousness, dying, and despair."

"The works of Friedrich differ greatly from those of other landscape painters in their motifs. The air - even though he paints it masterfully - takes up more than half of the space in most of his compositions. Middle- and background are often missing because his motifs don't require them. He likes to paint unfathomable plains. He is faithful to nature even in the smallest details and he has mastered his technique - in his oil paintings and sepia drawings - to perfection. His landscapes contain a melancholy, mysteriously religious meaning. They affect the heart more than the eye."

"..I must not neglect to report to you the three friends I have won. The firsts the composer Carl Maria [von] Weber.. ... the second, the landscape painter Friedrich.. ..His paintings are actually lyrical poems.. ..I described for him lately, when we conversed of suchlike moods, the rare beauty of the moonlight that we [Hjort and Olivia Rasbech] observed as we wandered past the old limestone kiln, and my words fell so fortuitously that he burst out: Das mach ich Ihnen! [I shall paint that for you!].. ..prepared to take my leave he said: Give me the lady's address the next time we meet, and you shall find that upon your return from this voyage, the painting shall adorn her wall.. .. At the very next meeting between us, he demanded to be shown your portrait, which I naturally had in my possession, and he already had a first draft of the painting, which he showed to me with these very words: Nicht wahr? So war's? [That’s how it was, wasn't it?].. .I hesitated for a few weeks, but then I had to yield, upon which he solemnly declared: Ein festes Auge, das ist jafast wie ein Knäblein! Mag's einen herrlichen Charakter geben, wenn sie ins Leben tritt [A firm gaze; it is almost like that of a small boy! May it give her a delightful character when she steps out into life]."

"On the day he is painting air he may not be spoken to!"

"Whenever a storm with thunder and lightning moved over the sea, he would hurry out to the top of the cliffs as if he had a pact of friendship with the forces of nature, or even went on into the oakwood where the lightning had split a tall tree from top to bottom, which led him to murmur: 'How great, how mighty, how wonderful!'"

"..it was a picture of the kind that only an aeronaut can see, when he rises in his airship above the height of the clouds.. ..up to where.. ..the untroubled blue of the heaven is visible between the wisps of mist."

"It is magnificent to stand in infinite solitude on the seashore, beneath an overcast sky, and to look on an endless waste of water. Part of this feeling is the fact that one has made life's way there and yet must go back, that one would like to cross over but cannot, that one sees nothing to support life and yet senses the voice of life in the sigh of the waves, the murmur of the air, the passing clouds and the lonely cry of birds."

"Part of this feeling is a claim made by the heart and a rejection, if I may call it that, on the part of nature. But this is impossible in front of the picture, and what I should have found in the picture itself I found only between myself and the picture, namely a claim my heart made on the picture and the picture's rejection of me; and so I myself became the monk, and the picture became the dune, but the sea itself, on which I should have looked out with longing — the sea was absent."

"There can be nothing sadder or more desolate in the world than this place: the only spark of life in the broad domain of death, the lonely center in the lonely circle. The picture, with its two or three mysterious subjects (monk, dune, sea), lies there like an apocalypse.."

"it is as if one's eyelids had been cut off. Yet the painter has undoubtedly broken an entirely new path in the field of his art, and I am convinced that with his spirit, a square mile of the sand of Mark Brandenburg could be represented with a barberry bush, on which a lone crow might sit preening itself"

"Why, if the artist painted this landscape using its own chalk and its own water, I believe he would make the foxes and wolves weep: the most powerful praise, without doubt, that could be given to this kind of landscape painting."

"Yet my own impressions of this wonderful painting are too confused, and so, before I venture to express them in full, I have decided to learn what I can from the remarks of the couples who pass before it [at the exhibition] from morning till evening. I listened to the remarks of the many viewers around me and now relay them as comments on this painting, which is surely a stage set before which a scene must be acted, for it allows no repose:"

"GOVERNESS: Why did he paint nothing but dull skies? How lovely it would be if he had painted some men gathering amber on the seashore."

"FIRST YOUNG LADY: Oh yes, I'd like to fish for a nice amber necklace for myself."

"GENTLEMAN: Magnificent, magnificent! This is the only artist who expresses a soul in his landscapes. There is a great individuality in this picture, high truth, solitude, the overcast, melancholy sky — he knows what he’s painting all right."

"SECOND GENTLEMAN: And he also paints what he knows, and feels it, and thinks it, and paints it."

"SECOND GENTLEMAN: [the monk].. ..he does predict the weather, he is the one within the wholeness, the lonely center in the lonely circle."

"FIRST GENTLEMAN: Yes, he is the soul, the heart, the whole picture's reflection in itself and on itself."

"SECOND GENTLEMAN: How divinely the figure is chosen, it is not merely a device to show the height of the other objects, as in the work of the common run of painters. He is the subject itself, he is the picture; and as he seems to dream himself into this setting, as if into a sad mirror of his isolation, so the ship-less, enclosing sea, which binds him like a vow,"

"FIRST GENTLEMAN: Magnificent, certainly, you are right. (to the Lady) But, my dear, you have not said a word."

"LADY: Oh, I felt so at home in front of the picture, it truly touched me. It is truly lifelike, and when you were talking like that, it was all hazy, just like when I went for a walk beside the sea with our philosophical friends. I only wish that a fresh sea breeze was blowing and a sail was coming in, and that there was a glint of sunlight and the water was lapping. As it is, it's like a dream, having a nightmare or feeling homesick — let's move on, it's making me feel sad."

"A TALL, FORBEARING MAN: I am glad that there is still one landscape painter who pays attention to the strange conjunctures of the seasons and the sky, which produce the most striking effects in even the poorest regions. True, I would prefer it if he also had the gift and the technique to represent it truthfully; in this respect he is as far inferior to some of the Dutch School who have painted subjects similar to this as he is their superior in his overall approach."

"..northerly Ossianic nature reflected the icy air and the chalck-cliffed coasts of the Baltic Sea where he was brought up."

"Friedrich has now given a task: someone wants to have two pictures - one representing an Italian landscape in all its luxuriant magnificent beauty, the other - the awe inspiring nature of the north. It is the second that Friedrich has undertaken to paint; he does not know what it will be. He is waiting for the moment of inspiration, which frequently comes to him, as he told me, in a dream."

"Even the things most necessary to painting - the box of paints, the bottles of linseed oil, and the oil-rag - were moved to the adjoining room, because Frederick [Friedrich] was of the opinion that any objects would disturb his inner world of imagination.."

"[Friedrich] ignores the use of light [and] does not strive to adjust his colors to one another or to create a harmony.. ..[but his pictures were] thought-out inventions.."

"We visited Friedrich's atelier today. Listening to him and seeing his paintings was wonderful. He has some bonhomie which pleases people and his paintings reveal his romantic imagination. As a rule, he expresses in them one thought or feeling, though vaguely. You may meditate over his paintings but not have a clear understanding of them, for they are vague even in his soul. They are dreams or daydreams. He often employs very simple natural things, such as an ice block floating on sea waves, a few trees in a dale, window of his room (facing the beautiful Elbe), knight meditating over ruins or tombstones, monk staring into the distance or below his feet: all this captivates your soul, plunges you into dreams, all invokes your imagination, powerfully though vaguely."

"From time to time I see the painter Friedrich here. He has started a large landscape [the painting 'Cemetery at Dusk'].. .A large iron gate, which leds into a cemetery, stand open; by the gate, leaning on one of his posts and partly covered by its shadow, a man and a woman can be seen.. ..who have just buried their child and in the night are looking at its grave.. ..it is just a little grass mound, besides which one can see a spade, Streaks of mist lie over the cemetery, they hide the tree trunks from sight so that they seem detached from the ground. One can make out other graves through the misty veil, and, above all, natural monuments[!]; an upright stone looks like a grey ghost."

"He never made sketches, cartoons, or color studies for his paintings, because he stated (and certainly he was not entirely wrong), that such aids chill the imagination somewhat. He did not begin to paint an image until it stood, living, in the presence of his soul.."

"In landscape it was Friedrich above all whose profound and vigorous mind, with total originality, laid hold of this tangle of banality, staleness, and tedium and—cutting through it with a mordant melancholy — raised from its midst a distinctively new and radiant poetic tendency."

"What a picture of death this landscape is!.. ..one shudders when looking at it."

"Artists and connoisseurs saw in Friedrich's art only a kind of mystic, because they themselves were only looking out for the mystic.. ..They did not see Friedrich's faithful and conscientious study of nature in everything he represented."

"This picture [ 'Man and Woman contemplating the Moon',] full of sentiment and the quietness of nature, was painted by Friedrich in 1819 and he gave it to me in exchange for one of my own works. Friedrich had to copy it several times, but he did not approve of this, hence others copied it as well. Only the deserved destination for the picture, the Royal Picture Gallery, could convince me to part with it."

"Friedrich, with his somewhat stiff and diffuse but highly poetic manner, was the first artist — in painting as a whole, but more especially in landscape painting — who ever assailed and shook up the philistines of Dresden. There had been a great stir when one of his paintings, a crucifix on a rock beneath dark fir trees and against the dying glow of an evening sky, had given rise to a literary controversy conducted on Friedrich's behalf by his friend Gerhard von Kügelchen [Kügelgen] and on the opposing side by a prosaic dilettante, a certain Herr von Ramdohr — to the latter's eventual discomfiture."

"He [Friedrich] was indeed a strange mixture of temperament, his moods ranging from the gravest seriousness to the gayest humor.. ..But anyone who knew only this side of Friedrich's personality, namely his deep melancholic seriousness, only knew half the man. I have met few people who have such a gift for telling jokes and such a sense of fun as he did, providing that he was in the company of people he liked."

"Here is a man who has discovered the tragedy of landscape."

"[Friedrich] worked in the frigid technique of his time, which could hardly inspire a school of modern painting.."

"Whenever a storm with thunder and lightning moved over the sea, he would hurry out to the top of the cliffs as if he had a pact of friendship with the forces of nature, or even went on into the oakwood where the lightning had split a tall tree from top to bottom, which led him to murmur: 'How great, how mighty, how wonderful!' Thus a friend remembered the wanderings of Caspar David Friedrich as a young painter on the Baltic island of Rugen in 1802. It was Friedrich's favorite posture: Homo romanticus out in the weather, saluting the crag."

"He never made the obligatory journey south to study in Rome; his subject matter was the foggy and precipitous vista, sublimely expansive and filled with premonitory brooding. The writer Ludwig Tieck believed Friedrich was the Nordic genius incarnate, whose mission was "to express and suggest most sensitively the solemn sadness and religious stimulus which seem recently to be reviving our German world in a strange way." Friedrich's work, the Dresden painter Ludwig Richter remarked in 1825, does not deal with "the spirit and importance of nature.. ..Friedrich chains us to an abstract idea, using the forms of nature in a purely allegorical manner, as signs and hieroglyphs.""

"The revolutionaire and seaport scenes of Lorrain [French painter Claude Lorrain, strongly admired by Friedrich] contain many artistic principles which form an important part of Friedrich’s style: melting distances where water and sky merge as one, the portrayal of a dreamlike unreal world beyond, seascapes in which early morning light dissolves into mist which engulfs ships that appear as mysterious aspparations, magically floating in fluid ether. The assumtion that Friedrich is an isolated figure in the history of art is not correct."

"Friedrich is recognized today as the supreme German painter of the Romantic era, but in his own time his genius was not so widely acknowledged. This was not because the aims of his art were foreign to the interests of his generation. On the contrary, his allusions to the spiritual in nature, his close study of the local landscape, and his emphasis on the need for inspiration were all commonplace preoccupations of the period. His art was undervalued because it explored these areas with a new uncompromising vision that was too personal and original to be easily grasped."

"Friedrich's written commentary on aesthetics was limited to a collection of aphorisms set down in 1830, in which he explained the need for the artist to match natural observation with an introspective scrutiny of his own personality."

"The isolation of Friedrich's back-view figures [in his pictures] underscores their importance. They are alone, solitary, in pairs or in a small group, in a natural setting. They are aliens in the elementary coordinate system of nature. One always feels that they have only just now entered the painting, to pause for a long moment and then go on."

"It is significant, as William Vaughan remarks in his introduction to Borsch-Supan's catalogue, that churches never appear in Friedrich's work except in the distance, as unreal visions, or as ruins. The visible Church is dead, only the invisible Church, in the heart or revealed through Nature, is alive. This is part of Friedrich's Pietist heritage, a personal religion that refuses all outward forms, all doctrine. To put a landscape on an altar is an aggressive act, as destructive of the old forms as it is creative of a new sensibility."

"How does Friedrich persuade us, again and again, that we are at the very edge of the natural world, ready at last to immerse ourselves in something that, for want of a better word, must be called the supernatural – a domain of the mystical speculation about human life and afterlife that before the Romantics found a proper home in the church?"

"To see any of Friedrich's paintings as simply nationalist is, however, mistaken. His paintings are not celebrations of German mysticism so much as examinations of it. Friedrich uses the emptiness of the Baltic shore and the Thuringian forest to suggest the hubris of empire. He is not the prophet of German territorial ambition but its satirist. Friedrich's theme is the unconquerability of space. Human beings are tiny interlopers in a world they can never hope to rule. He exposes authority - of the monarchical states, Prussia and the rest, from which German liberals felt so alienated."

"When not converging on literally nothing, his pictorial schemes address objects that are either remote, like the moon, or obdurate, like the battered oak. Human figures intercept our gaze and transmit it into ineffable distance. The pictures don't give; they take. Something is drawn out of us with a harrowing effect, which Friedrich's use of color nudges toward intoxication. What at first seem to be mere tints in a tonal range combust into distinctly scented, disembodied hues: drenching purples and scratchy russets, plum."

"Friedrich empties his canvas in order to imagine, through an invocation of the void, an infinite, unrepresentable God."

"Well, then, Lord Jesus! I will creep if I cannot walk; I will take hold of Thy word. When I stumble, Thou wilt support me; when I fall, Thou wilt hold out Thy Cross, and help me with it to rise again, until at length I reach the place where Thou art, and with all my weaknesses, anxieties, and wants, cast myself into Thy bosom."

"O, my God! withhold from me the wealth to which tears, and sighs, and curses cleave. Better none at all than wealth like that!"

"Lord Jesus, engrave Thou Thy name with Thine own finger upon my heart, that it may remain closed to worldly joy and worldly pleasure, self-interest, fading honor, and low revenge, and open only to Thee!"

"In the school of Christ they are the best scholars who continue learning to the last."

"My God, help me always resolutely to strive, and through life and death, to force my way unto Thee."

"Never have I greater reason for suspicion than when I am particularly pleased with myself, my faith, my prayers, and my alms."

"My God, give me neither poverty nor riches; but whatsoever it may be Thy will to give, give me with it a heart which knows humbly to acquiesce in what is Thy will."

"God has given you your child, that the sight of him, from time to time, might remind you of His goodness, and induce you to praise Him with filial reverence."

"The whole of Christianity is comprised in three things — to believe, to love, and to obey Jesus. These are things, however, which we must be learning all our life."

"My God, I ask not of Thee the leaves of external consequence; I will be content to continue simple, lowly, and plain, if Thou wilt only give me grace to serve Thee and my neighbor. Outward pomp withers like a flower, but inward worth lasts even after death."

"As this brook not merely washes off impurities, but overwhelms them, so that they can no longer be found, even so Thy Divine mercy, and the stream of my Saviour's blood, not only purge away, but extinguish my sins, sweeping them into the depths of the sea, where through all eternity they shall be remembered no more."

"It is self-love, and its offspring, self-deception, which shut the gates of heaven, and lead men, as in a delicious dream, to hell."

"O my God! close my eyes that I may see Thee; separate me from the world that I may enjoy Thy company."

"As ravens rejoice over carrion, so infernal spirits exult over the soul that is dead in sin."

"Jesus, save me from the infatuation of avarice! I too will lay up a treasure, but Thou shalt have the keeping of it."

"Be less concerned about the number of the books you read, and more about the good use you make of them. The best of books is the Bible."

"My God! my time is in Thy hands. Should it please Thee to lengthen my life, and complete, as Thou hast begun, the work of blanching my locks, grant me grace to wear them as an unsullied crown of honour."

"What is Europe really but a sterile trunk which owes everything to oriental grafts?"

"If there is to be any philosophy at all, this contradiction must be resolved – and the solution of this problem, or answer to the question: how can we think both of Presentations as conforming to objects, and objects as conforming to presentations? is, not the first, but the highest task of transcendental philosophy."

"It is easy to see that this problem can be solved neither in theoretical nor in practical philosophy, but only in a higher discipline, which is the link that combines them, and neither theoretical nor practical, but both at once."

"Wie zugleich die objektive Welt nach Vorstellungen in uns, und Vorstellungen in uns nach der objektiven Welt sich bequemen, ist nicht zu begreifen, wenn nicht zwischen den beiden Welten, der ideellen und der reellen, eine vorherbestimmte Harmonie existiert. Diese vorherbestimmte Harmonie aber ist selbst nicht denkbar, wenn nicht die Tätigkeit, durch welche die objektive Welt produziert ist, ursprünglich identisch ist mit der, welche im Wollen sich äußert, und umgekehrt."

"Alle Regeln, die man dem Studieren vorschreiben könnte, fassen sich in der einen zusammen: Lerne nur, um selbst zu schaffen."

"Die Scheu vor der Spekulation, das angebliche Forteilen vom bloß Theoretischen zum Praktischen, bewirkt im Handeln notwendig die gleiche Flachheit wie im Wissen. Das Studium einer streng theoretischen Philosophie macht uns am unmittelbarsten mit Ideen vertraut, und nur Ideen geben dem Handeln Nachdruck und sittliche Bedeutung."

"The books which are called Biblical were an obstacle to the perfection of Christianity and, in terms of truly religious content, they could not even remotely be compared with the sacred books of India, as well as many others from earlier and later times."

"The Christian missionaries who came to India believed they were proclaiming something unheard of to the inhabitants when they taught that the God of the Christians had become man. The latter were not astonished by this; they by no means denied the incarnation of God in Christ, and only found it strange that among the Christians it had happened just once, whereas with them it occurred often and in constant repetition. One cannot deny that they had more understanding of their religion than the Christian missionaries had of theirs."

"The end of the philosophical dialogue lies in itself; it can never serve a purpose outside of itself. Just as a sculptor does not cease to be a work of art even if it lies at the bottom of the sea, so indeed every work of philosophy endures, even if uncomprehended in its own time. One would be grateful if it were merely a matter of incomprehension. Instead, the work is usually refitted and appropriated by various entities-some playing the part of the opponent; others, that of the proponent. P.3-4"

"There was a time when religion was kept secret from popular belief within the mystery cults like a holy fire, sharing a common sanctuary with philosophy. The legends of antiquity name the earliest philosophers as the originators of these mystery cults, from which the most enlightened among the later philosophers, notably Plato, liked to educe their divine teachings. At that time philosophers still had the courage and the right to discuss the singly great themes, the only ones worthy of philosophizing and rising above common knowledge. P. 7"

"They think of the philosopher as holding the ideal or subjective in one hand and the real or objective in the other and then have him strike the palms of his hands together so that one abrades the other. The product of this abrasion is the Absolute. P. 12"

"Countless attempts have been made to no avail to construct a continuity from the supreme principle of the intellectual world to the finite world. The oldest and most frequent of these attempts is well known: the principle of emanation, according to which the outflowings from the godhead, in gradual increments and detachment from the ordinary source, losing their divine perfection until, in the end, they pass into the opposite (matter, privation), just as light is finally confined by darkness. P. 24"

"On its pass through finitude, the being-for-itself of the counter-image expresses itself most potently as “”I-ness”, as self-identical individuality. Just as a planet in its orbit no sooner reaches its farthest distance from the center than it returns to its closest proximity, so the point of the farthest distance from God, the I-ness, is also the moment of its return to the Absolute, of the re-absorption into the ideal. P. 30"

"Yes! We believe in a higher principle than your virtue and the kind of morality you speak of so paltrily and without much conviction. We believe that there is no imperative or reward for virtue for the soul because it simply acts according to the necessity of its inherent nature. The moral imperative expresses itself in an ought and presupposes the concept of an evil next to that of good. P. 43"

"If the State, modeled after the universe, is split into two spheres or classes of beings – wherein the free represent the ideas and the unfree the concrete and sensate things – then the ultimate and uppermost order remains unrealized by both. By using sensate things as tools or organs, the ideas obtain a direct relationship to the apparitions and enter into them as souls. God, however, as identity of the highest order, remains above all reality and eternally has merely an indirect relationship. If then in the higher moral order the State represents a second nature, then the divine can never have anything other than an indirect relationship to it, never can it bear any real relationship to it, and religion, if it seeks to preserve itself in unscathed pure ideality, can therefore never exist – even in the most perfect State – other than esoterically in the form of mystery cults. P. 51"

"Schelling’s later work, like his early work, is often unsatisfactory in many different ways. There can be no doubt, however, about its historical importance for the development of modern philosophy: thinkers like Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Feuerbach, Nietzsche and Heidegger owe far more to Schelling than they admit."

"In one of his earlier writings, the System of Transcendental Idealism; which we shall consider first of all, Schelling represented transcendental philosophy and natural philosophy as the two sides of scientific knowledge. Respecting the nature of the two, he expressly declared himself in this work, where he once more adopts a Fichtian starting-point: “All knowledge rests on the harmony of an objective with a subjective” In the common sense of the words this would be allowed; absolute unity, where the Notion and the reality are undistinguished in the perfected Idea, is the Absolute alone, or God; all else contains an element of discord between the objective and subjective. “We may give the name of nature to the entire objective content of our knowledge the entire subjective content, on the other hand, is called the ego or intelligence.” They are in themselves identical and presupposed as identical. The relation of nature to intelligence is given by Schelling thus: “Now if all knowledge has two poles which mutually presuppose and demand one another, there must be two fundamental sciences, and it must be impossible to start from the one pole without being driven to the other”. Thus nature is impelled to spirit, and spirit to nature; either may be given the first place, and both must come to pass. “If the objective is made the chief” we have the natural sciences as result, and; “the necessary tendency” the end, of all natural science thus is to pass from nature to intelligence. This is the meaning of the effort to connect natural phenomena with theory. The highest perfection of natural science would be the perfect spiritualization of all natural laws into laws of intuitive perception and thought.""

"In der Quantenphysik dagegen bedeutet jede Beobachtung einen Eingriff in das Beobachtete; eine Zustandsveränderung am Beobachteten ist auf Grund der quantenphysikalischen Naturgesetze mit dem Beobachtungsprozess zwangslaüfig verknüpft. Also nicht ein sowieso, unabhängig von diesem Experiment vorhandener Tatbestand wird wahrgenommen, sondern wir selber rufen die Tatbestände hervor (oder: nötigen sie in bestimmter Richtung zu einer Klärung), die dann zur Wahrnehmung gelangen."

"More often than not, one meets technicians, nimble keyboardists by profession, who … indeed astound us with their prowess without ever touching our sensibilities .... stirring performance depends upon an alert mind which is willing to follow reasonable precepts in order to reveal the content of the compositions. What comprises good performance? The ability through singing or playing to make the ear conscious of the true content and affect of a composition. Any passage can be so radically changed by modifying its performance that it will be scarcely recognizable."

"A musician cannot move others unless he too is moved. He must feel all the emotions that he hopes to arouse in his audience, for the revealing of his own humor will stimulate a like mood in the listener."

"According to my principles, every master has his true and certain value. Praise and criticism cannot change any of that. Only the work itself praises and criticizes the master, and therefore I leave to everyone his own value."

"Iraq has WMDs. It is not something we think, it is something we know. Iraq has itself admitted that it has had mustard gas, nerve gas, anthrax, but Saddam won't disclose. He won't tell us where and how these weapons have been destroyed. We know this from the UN inspectors, so there is no doubt in my mind."

"That's what it's like when people have crawled very high up in a tree, then they sometimes need help to get down with ladders and ropes and other instruments."

"The good thing is that all the symbolic elements are gone, and that which really matters – the core – is left."

"I was deeply distressed that the cartoons were seen by many Muslims as an attempt by Denmark to mark and insult or behave disrespectfully towards Islam or Mohammed."

"It could never happen in Denmark, Danish people are much more calm than those further south."

"I often use Sweden as a discouraging example to promte a free and open debate and maintain a strict immigration policy."

"Theological condemnation of others, which breaks off fellowship in either judgment or contempt, is impermissible."

"Gradually he [King Frederik] showed me everybody was going to help me in this...it was not a terrifying thing, but a great challenge."

"I was supported from every side by my family and by the ministers, but so much also by the people."

"That cold January day - and so many people... I'd never imagined it would happen nowadays."

"We were so busy that we didn't have time to think about how terrible it was or - in fact it felt strangely natural."

"God's help, the love of the people, the strength of Denmark."

"You are handed your job as the old king or queen dies... It is not a life sentence, but a life of service."

"Being Queen is a profession, a job, a position, an office that one cannot put aside when you come home from work. It is there all the time - and it is there all your life."

"I would like to stress that the obligation [of being Queen] has always been driven by joy. The joy is rooted in the warmth that has met me and my family everywhere through every year, in celebration and joy as in sorrow, in the so-called "big days", as well as in everyday life."

"I have always felt that it is a task that you are given, and that you have it as long as you live. That is my fundamental view. It is an integral part of the job that you have it for life."

"For me, it [being Queen] is a responsibility that does not include abdication. It is a task one has been given and taken upon oneself, and one does not relinquish it because it would perhaps be convenient personally to be rid of some of it."

"I will remain on the throne until I fall off!"

"In February this year I underwent extensive back surgery. Everything went well, thanks to the competent health personnel, who took care of me. Inevitably, the operation gave cause to thoughts about the future – whether now would be an appropriate time to pass on the responsibility to the next generation."

"I have decided that now is the right time. On 14 January 2024 – 52 years after I succeeded my beloved father – I will step down as Queen of Denmark. I will hand over the throne to my son Crown Prince Frederik."

"I do not think one should chase the fashions of the day, concerning neither sweaters nor opinions."

"One should never be so formal that one loses life, but one should never be so informal that one becomes without form of any kind."

"The fact that I am a woman has never really played into what I have done or not done. I have just been lucky that things have played out so that I could do things."

"But are we seeing indications these years that we have become more selfish, that we have become inclined to first and foremost make demands, and make sure that we all get what we ourselves think we are entitled to? Are we becoming distrustful of each other, and beginning to ascribe less than pure motives to each other? If that is the case, we are not only in an economic crisis. Then it is our attitudes that are slipping. It is a crisis that is insidious because it creeps upon us and poisons our relationships with each other. It means that we are jeopardising something that may be irretrievable."

"In the course of the last few generations, society has developed in such a way that we can live more and more safely, both financially and socially. We have got used to being able to pick and choose quite freely in big and small matters. Our circumstances are so good now that we have almost forgotten that our decisions also have consequences and that we cannot opt into or out of all life’s conditions."

"In spite of the many initiatives our society offers to help and support, recovery can be such a monumental task that some give up. They withdraw into themselves. Not least during Christmas and New Year is it hard to feel left out. Tonight my thoughts are with them."

"We do not have that much to moan about when one thinks of what people did not moan about before."

"Painting is not what my life is about, but it is very important to me, and I am very lucky to be able to give some time to it. The time that I devote to painting is not a lot of time, but I do it 100 percent while I am working, and then there's nothing else that counts."

"I think, for me, nature has always been my main point of reference. I think as a child I was fascinated by landscapes and nature wherever I went. I was able to travel all over Denmark, which is not that large, everywhere in this country where I've been I always loved the landscape."

"For me it is always the colour, first and foremost."

"I think that people imagine protocol and etiquette as some kind of great dragon that hovers behind the pageantries of the palace to pounce on you and eat you up if you aren't behaving as you should. But in fact etiquette is saying how to do when you meet people, saying good night to your parents before going to bed, opening a door to a woman, getting up if an older person wants to sit down on the bus and it's all full, that is etiquette, or protocol, if you wish. At the everyday level, all the time, all of us. It's a way of knowing what you've got to do so that you have your mind free to do other things and think of other things."

"One would not die from my cooking, but I am not sure one would survive my driving."

"One may well use one's head even though one is in love. Someone has said that one cannot prevent lightening from striking – but one may prevent the whole town from burning down."

"When people say that I may not speak, they forget that I may well think. I may think what I want, like everyone else. I shall just refrain from saying everything I think. That might be something many people should do once in a while."

"We can be very relaxed in our relationship with the Danish people...I feel extraordinarily privileged."

"There is nothing so clever as people you agree with."

"I hope I will be able to paint as long as I live."

"One shouldn't write one's own epitaph. I hope people will remember me as one who did her best - and who wasn't an anachronism."

"With dignity, with proximity and wisely have you been an anchor for the Danes."

"You are not just 'Denmark's Queen'. You are the Danes' Queen."

"Dear mother – it is always parents who say they are proud of their children. I know your father, my grandfather, King Frederik IX, would have repeated: "I'm proud of you, my girl". But I stand here today as your eldest son, proud of his mother, and all she has achieved so far. Dear mother, you appear as the mother both of your sons remember from their youth: a beautiful queen, a stalwart girl."

"For the Greeks who believed in the immortality of the soul it may have been harder to accept the Christian preaching of the resurrection than it was for others. . . . The teaching of the great philosophers Socrates and Plato can in no way be brought into consonance [agreement] with that of the New Testament."

"Plato shows us how Socrates goes to his death in complete peace and composure. The death of Socrates is a beautiful death. Nothing is seen here of death’s terror. Socrates cannot fear death, since indeed it sets us free from the body. . . . Death is the soul’s great friend. So he teaches; and so, in wonderful harmony with his teaching, he dies."

"Because Jesus came, died, and was resurrected, O[ld] T[estament] festivals have now been fulfilled, and to maintain them ‘means reverting back to the old covenant, as if Christ had never come."

"There is a radical difference between the Christian expectation of the resurrection of the dead and the Greek belief in the immortality of the soul. . . . Although Christianity later established a link between these two beliefs, and today the average Christian confuses them completely, I see no reason to hide what I and the majority of scholars consider to be the truth. . . . The life and thought of the New Testament are entirely dominated by faith in the resurrection. . . . The whole man, who is really dead, is brought back to life by a new creative act of God."

"The complex notion of the ‘provisional’ character of the State is the reason why the attitude of the first Christians toward the State is not unitary, but rather appears to be contradictory. I emphasize, that it appears to be so. We need only mention Romans 13:1, ‘Let every man be subject to the powers that be . . . ,’ alongside Revelation 13: the State as the beast from the abyss. In both instances, the same Roman state is spoken of."

"To superficial consideration, it might appear that in its relationship to the State Christianity simply took over the heritage of Judaism, and that the problem poses itself in exactly the same way here as there. Actually, however, the Jewish theocratic ideal is expressly rejected by Christianity as satanic—we need only recall the temptation stories in the Gospel. Satan offers to Christ the kingdoms of the world."

"The Gospel knows nothing of that confusion of the Kingdom of God with the State which is characteristic of the theocratic ideal of Judaism. On the contrary, it opposed the theocratic ideal of Judaism with the same sharpness with which it resisted the totalitarian claims of the Roman State."

"The Zealots ... want to initiate a holy war and to establish within a human framework a Kingdom of God which is an earthly kingdom and which at the same time takes the place of the Roman Empire. Jesus sees that use of this method places one on exactly the same plane as every other totalitarian State. This is also an abandonment of the New Testament expectation of a kingdom which is really God's, and not a human kingdom. If the Zealots succeed in realising their ideal, it will be a totalitarian State of the most extreme form; one making divine claims."

"Chemists in the late 1800s knew that cyclic molecules existed, but the limitations on ring size were unclear. Although numerous compounds containing five-membered and six-membered rings were known, smaller and larger ring sizes had not been prepared, despite many efforts. A theoretical interpretation of this observation was proposed in 1885 by Adolf von Baeyer, who suggested that small and large rings might be unstable due to angle strain. … The data … show that Baeyer’s theory is only partially correct. Cyclopropane and cyclobutane are indeed strained, just as predicted, but cyclopentane is more strained than predicted, and cyclohexane is strain-free. Cycloalkanes of intermediate size have only modest strain, and rings of 14 carbons or more are strain-free. Why is Baeyer’s theory wrong? Baeyer’s theory is wrong for the simple reason that he assumed all cycloalkanes to be flat."

"The non-Christian can put no question which is not necessarily that of the Christian dogmatician as well. ... In solidarity with the non-Christian, he has no prior knowledge. He must begin from the very beginning with no presupposed consciousness of God. He must learn to spell out the message which comes to him as to every man."

"The attack and claim which are so unmistakable in the New Testament were muted and neutralized by the official recognition, the cultural integration and the social control of Christianity as a middle-class institution."

"In its resistance to the great attack on traditional dogma launched by the Enlightenment, the Protestant theology of the 19th century … had very largely agreed in taking up a defensive position in which the truth of Christian faith was to be proved by demonstrating the indispensability of religious feeling to all higher humanity. … Yet on this basis it was not possible to refute the contention of Ludwig Feuerbach that the secret of theology is anthropology. … The secret of God was in truth that of self-glorifying man speaking of God and extolling his own divinity."

"That is something that I of course will continue to work on. To work for Sweden, to work for the people of Sweden and together with my family continue to work in the coming years for the monarchy in Sweden."

"We are strong and we will work for the monarchy in the future and I feel strengthened by that, more than before."

"I have been King for 38 years, for which I am very proud, and during those many years I have felt a strong support from the Swedish people."

"For me it is important to live in harmony with developments in Sweden and all over the changing world around us that we are actually part of."

"Sweden is the country a good reputation in the world around us. It is something that the Queen and I often experience during our state visit. Both the country and the people are perceived very positively. Our services and products are something we should be proud of. Sweden respected as a nation and it is with pleasure and pride that I represent our country. For example, noted Nobel Prize much and it helps to show up Sweden as a nation that promotes education and science."

"We are a small nation and need to cooperate across borders. As a result of the good reputation that Sweden has since long it is easy to build relationships."

"My concern for environmental issues and the challenge to leave our fragile planet in good condition for future generations. However, we take advantage of our opportunities, all the positive and hopeful I meet during my travels in this country and abroad, I am convinced that together we can a promising future."

"The biggest priviledge is that you, as a princess, can create attention about important issues. That I have the opportunity to make a difference."

"I love the city and to be in contact with many people, but I really need to be out in nature as well."

"I feel at home here. This is my town. It's an awesome city - That's a word my kids have taught me to use."

"I think everyone is nervous the first time they meet a new boyfriend’s family and it doesn’t make you less nervous when it’s a royal couple. You always want to give a good first impression. The first meeting being nice, means a lot."

"I sometimes miss the anonymity and walking around without makeup on and having messy hair."

"One thing is clear, ... A proximity to the people who are willing to take on responsibility, who are everywhere in our country and not just in politics, will be my main mission. I want to be active in inviting these people to take on responsibility and not just stand around as spectators and critical observers of public life."

"When the ultimate case is discussed — deployment of the German military — it should be Germany can neither answer ‘no’ out of principle or give an automatic ‘yes.’"

"The mathematicians have been very much absorbed with finding the general solution of algebraic equations, and several of them have tried to prove the impossibility of it. However, if I am not mistaken, they have not as yet succeeded. I therefore dare hope that the mathematicians will receive this memoir with good will, for its purpose is to fill this gap in the theory of algebraic equations."

"Lety5 - ay4 + by3 - cy2 + dy - e = 0be the general equation of the fifth degree and suppose that it can be solved algebraically,—i.e., that y can be expressed as a function of the quantities a, b, c, d, and e, composed of radicals. In this case, it is clear that y can be written in the formy = p + p1R1/m + p2R2/m +...+ pm-1R(m-1)/m,m being a prime number, and R, p, p1, p2, etc. being functions of the same form as y. We can continue in this way until we reach rational functions of a, b, c, d, and e. [Note: main body of proof is excluded] ...we can find y expressed as a rational function of Z, a, b, c, d, and e. Now such a function can always be reduced to the formy = P + R1/5 + P2R2/5 + P3R3/5 + P4R4/5, where P, R, P2, P3, and P4 are functions or the form p + p1S1/2, where p, p1 and S are rational functions of a, b, c, d, and e. From this value of y we obtainR1/5 = 1/5(y1 + α4y2 + α3y3 + α2y4 + αy5) = (p + p1S1/2)1/5,whereα4 + α3 + α2 + α + 1 = 0.Now the first member has 120 different values, while the second member has only 10; hence y can not have the form that we have found: but we have proved that y must necessarily have this form, if the proposed equation can be solved: hence we conclude that It is impossible to solve the general equation of the fifth degree in terms of radicals. It follows immediately from this theorem, that it is also impossible to solve the general equations of degrees higher than the fifth, in terms of radicals."

"My work in the future must be devoted entirely to pure mathematics in its abstract meaning. I shall apply all my strength to bring more light into the tremendous obscurity which one unquestionably finds in analysis. It lacks so completely all plan and system that it is peculiar that so many have studied it. The worst of it is, it has never been treated stringently. There are very few theorems in advanced analysis which have been demonstrated in a logically tenable manner. Everywhere one finds this miserable way of concluding from the special to the general, and it is extremely peculiar that such a procedure has led to do few of the so-called paradoxes. It is really interesting to seek the cause. In analysis, one is largely occupied by functions which can be expressed as powers. As soon as other powers enter—this, however, is not often the case—then it does not work any more and a number of connected, incorrect theorems arise from false conclusions. I have examined several of them, and been so fortunate as to make this clear. ...I have had to be extremely cautious, for the presumed theorems without strict proof... had taken such a stronghold in me, that I was continually in danger of using them without detailed verification."

"On the whole, Divergant series are the work of the Devil and it's a Shame that one dares base any Demonstration on them. You can get whatever result you want when you use them, and they have given rise to so many Disasters and so many Paradoxes. Can anything more horrible be conceived than to have the following oozing out of you: 0 = 1 - 2n + 3n - 4n + etc. where n is a whole Number? Risum teneatis amici. [Laughter retains friends]"

"On the whole, I do not like the French as well as the Germans; the French are extremely reserved toward strangers... Everybody works for himself without concern for others. All want to instruct, and nobody wants to learn. The most absolute egotism reigns everywhere. The only thing the French look for in strangers is the practical; no one can think except himself, he is the only one who can produce anything theoretical. This is the way he thinks and so you can understand it is really difficult to be noticed, particularly for a beginner."

"It is readily seen that any theory written by Laplace will be superior to all produced of lower standing. It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils."

"His memoirs on elliptic functions, originally published in Crelle's Journal (of which he was one of the founders), treat the subject from the point of view of the theory of equations and algebraic forms, a treatment to which his researches naturally led him. The important and very general result known as Abel's theorem, which was subsequently applied by Riemann to the theory of transcendental functions, was sent to the French Academy in 1826, but was not printed until 1841: its publication then was due to inquiries made by Jacobi, in consequence of a statement on the subject by B. Holmboe in his edition of Abel's works issued in 1839. ...Abel's theorem ...may be described as a theorem for evaluating the sum of a number of integrals which have the same integrand, but different limits—these limits being the roots of an algebraic equation. The theorem gives the sum of the integrals in terms of the constants occurring in this equation and in the integrand. We may regard the inverse of the integral of this integrand as a new transcendental function, and if so the theorem furnishes a property of this function. For instance, if Abel's theorem be applied to the integrand (1 - x^2)^\frac{-1}{2} it gives the addition theorem for the circular (or trigonometrical) functions."

"The name of Abelian function has been given to the higher transcendents of multiple periodicity which were first discussed by Abel. The Abelian functions connected with a curve f(x,y) are if the form \int u\,dx, where u is a rational function of x and y. The theory of Abelian functions has been studied by a very large number of modern writers."

"Abel criticised the use of infinite series, and discovered the well-known theorem which furnishes a test for the validity of the result obtained by multiplying one infinite series by another. He also proved the binomial theorem for the expansion of (1 + x)^n when x and n are complex. As illustrating his fertility of ideas... notice his celebrated demonstration that it is impossible to express a root of the general quintic equation in terms of its coefficients by means of a finite number of radicals and rational functions; this theorem was the more important since it definitely limited a field of mathematics which had previously attracted numerous writers. ...this theorem had been enunciated as early as 1798 by Paolo Ruffini... but I believe that the proof he gave was lacking in generality."

"Like Jacobi and many other young men who became eminent mathematicians, Abel found the first exercise of his talent in the attempt to solve by algebra the general equation of the fifth degree. ...His extraordinary success in mathematical study led to the offer of a stipend by the government, that he might continue his studies in Germany and France. ...Encouraged by Abel and Steiner, Crelle started his journal in 1826."

"Abel had sent to Gauss his proof of 1824 of the impossibility of solving equations of the fifth degree, to which Gauss never paid any attention. This slight, and a haughtiness of spirit which he associated with Gauss, prevented the genial Abel from going to Göttingen. A similar feeling was entertained by him later against Cauchy. ...He met... Dirichlet, Legendre, Cauchy, and others; but was little appreciated. He had already published several important memoirs in Crelle's Journal, but by the French this new periodical was as yet hardly known to exist, and Abel was too modest to speak of his own work. Pecuniary embarrassments induced him to return home..."

"At nearly the same time with Abel, Jacobi published articles on elliptic functions. Legendre's favourite subject, so long neglected, was at last to be enriched by some extraordinary discoveries. The advantage to be derived by inverting the elliptic integral of the first kind and treating it as a function of its amplitude (now called elliptic function) was recognised by Abel, and a few months later also by Jacobi. A second fruitful idea, also arrived at independently by both, is the introduction of imaginaries leading to the observation that the new functions simulated at once trigonometric and exponential functions. For it was shown that while trigonometric functions had only a real period, and exponential only an imaginary, elliptic functions had both sorts of periods. These two discoveries were the foundations upon which Abel and Jacobi, each in his own way, erected beautiful new structures. Abel developed the curious expressions representing elliptic functions by infinite series or quotients of infinite products."

"Great as were the achievements of Abel in elliptic functions, they were eclipsed by his researches on what are now called Abelian functions. Abel's theorem on these functions was given by him in several forms, the most general of these being that in his Mémoire sur une propriété générale d'une classe trés-étendue de fonctions transcendentes (1826). ...A few months after his arrival in Paris [July, 1826], Abel submitted it to the French Academy. Cauchy and Legendre were appointed to examine it; but said nothing about it until after Abel's death. ...The memoir remained in Cauchy's hands. It was not published until 1841. By a singular mishap, the manuscript was lost before the proof-sheets were read."

"In its form, the contents of the memoir [Mémoire sur une propriété générale... (1826)] belongs to the integral calculus. Abelian integrals depend upon an irrational function y which is connected with x by an algebraic equation F((x,y))=0. Abel's theorem asserts that a sum of such integrals can be expressed by a definite number p of similar integrals, where p depends merely on the properties of the equation F((x,y))=0. It was shown later that p is the deficiency of the curve F((x,y))=0. The addition theorems of elliptic integrals are deducible from Abel's theorem. The hyperelliptic integrals introduced by Abel, and proved by him to possess multiple periodicity, are special cases of Abelian integrals whenever p = or > 3. The reduction of Abelian to elliptic integrals has been studied mainly by Jacobi, Hermite, Königsberger, Brioschi, Goursat, E. Picard and O. Bolza..."

"Abel's theorem was pronounced by Jacobi the greatest discovery of our century on the integral calculus. The aged Legendre, who greatly admired Abel's genius, called it "monumentum aere perennius." During the few years of work allotted to the young Norwegian, he penetrated new fields of research, the development of which has kept mathematicians busy for over half a century."

"Other mathematicians confess that they have been unable to understand this proof and some have made the correct observation that Ruffini, perhaps by proving too much, had proved nothing in a satisfactory manner. Monsieur Abel has shown by a more penetrating analysis that there can be no algebraic [radical] roots, but he does not deny the possibility of transcendental roots. We recommend this problem to the attention of mathematicians specializing in this field."

"It is most remarkable that two men as different in character and outlook as Abel and Galois should have been interested in the same problem and should have attacked it by similar methods. Both approached the problem of the quintic equation in the conviction that a solution by radicals was possible; Abel at eighteen, Galois at sixteen. In fact, both thought for a while that they had discovered such a solution; both soon realized their error and attacked the problem by new methods."

"Analysis grew and grew, not heeding the warnings of the critics, constantly forging ahead and conquering new domains. First geometry and mechanics, then optics and acoustics, propogation of heat and thermodynamics, electricity and magnetism, and finally even the laws of the Chaos came under its direct sway. ...And yet this magnificent structure was created by the mathematicians... without much thought of the foundations on which it rested. Is it not remarkable then, that in spite of all the loose reasoning, all the vague notions and unwarranted generalization, so few serious errors had been committed? ...Then came the critical period: Abel and Jacobi, Gauss, Cauchy and Weierstrass, and finally Dedekind and Cantor, subjected the whole structure to a searching analysis, eliminating the vague and ambiguous. And what was the net result of this reconstruction? Well, it condemned the logic of the pioneers, but vindicated their faith."

"The tract in which Leibnitz deals with series appeared late in the seventeenth century and was among the first on the subject. ...the question of their convergence or divergence ...was in those days more or less ignored. ...It was not until the publication of Jacques Bernoulli's work on infinite series in 1713 that a clearer insight into the problem was gained. ...Bernoulli's work directed attention towards the necessity of establishing criteria of convergence. The evanescence of the general term, i.e., of the generating sequence, is certainly a necessary condition, but this is generally insufficient. Sufficient conditions have been established by d'Alembert and Maclauren, Cauchy, Abel, and many others. ...to recognized whether a series converges or diverges is even today rather difficult in some cases."

"One question that the Cardano-Ferrari work left unanswered was the algebraic solution of the quintic... as was well known, any fifth-degree equation must have at least one real solution. ...because the graphs of odd-degree equations ...rise ever higher as we move in one direction on the x-axis and fall ever lower as we move in the other direction ...the continuous graph must somewhere cross the x-axis. A similar argument guarantees that any odd-degree polynomial equation has at least one real solution. ...It was the precise formula... that the algebraists who followed Ferrari were seeking. ...A century passed, and another, yet no one could provide a "solution by radicals" ...in spite of the fact that later mathematicians found a transformation to reduce the general quintic to...z5 + pz = qThen... Niels Abel shocked the mathematical world by showing that no "solution by radicals" was possible for fifth- or higher-degree equations. ...Abel's proof ...stands as a landmark in mathematics history."

"Abel did not deny that we might solve quintics using techniques other than algebraic ones of adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, and extracting roots. ...the general quintic can be solved by introducing... "elliptic functions," but these require operations considerably more complicated than those of elementary algebra. In addition, Abel's result did not preclude our approximating solutions... as accurately as we... wish. What Abel did do was prove that there exists no algebraic formula... The analogue of the quadratic formula for second-degree equations and Cardano's formula for cubics simply does not exist... This situation is reminiscent of that encountered when trying to square the circle, for in both cases mathematicians are limited by the tools they can employ. ...the restriction to "solution by radicals"... hampers mathematicians... what Abel actually demonstrated was that algebra does have... limits, and for no obvious reason, these limits appear precisely as we move from the fourth to the fifth degree."

"But I would not like to part from this ideal type of researcher, such as has seldom appeared in the history of mathematics, without evoking a figure from another sphere who, in spite of his totally different field, still seems related. Thus, although Abel shared with many mathematicians a complete lack of musical talent, I will not sound absurd if I compare his kind of productivity and his personality with Mozart's. Thus one might erect a monument to this divinely inspired mathematician like the one to Mozart in Vienna: simple and unassuming he stands there listening, while graceful angels float about, playfully bringing him inspiration from another world. Instead, I must mention the very different type of memorial that was in fact erected to Abel in Christiania and which must greatly disappoint anyone familiar with his nature. On a towering, steep block of granite a youthful athlete of the Byronic type steps over two greyish sacrificial victims, his direction toward the heavens. If needed be, one might take the hero to be a symbol of the human spirit, but one ponders the deeper significance of the two monsters in vain. Are they the conquered quintic equations or elliptic functions? Or the sorrows and cares of his everyday life? The pedestal of the monument bears, in immense letters, the inscription ABEL."

"Rigorous analysis begins with the work of Bolzano, Cauchy, Abel, and Dirichlet and was furthered by Weierstrass."

"Abel read Lagrange's and Gauss's work in the theory of equations and while still a student in high school tackled the problem of the solvability of higher degree equations by following Gauss's treatment of the binomial equation. At first Abel thought he had solved the general fifth degree equation by radicals. But soon... he tried to prove that such a solution is not possible (1824-26). First he succeeded in proving the theorem: The roots of an equation solvable by radicals can be given such a form that each of the radicals occurring in the expressions for the roots is expressible as a rational function of the roots of the equation and certain roots of unity. Abel then used this theorem to prove the impossibility of solving by radicals the general equation of degree greater than four. ...His paper ...contained an error in a classification of functions, which fortunately was not essential to the argument. He later published two more elaborate proofs. A simple, direct, and rigorous proof based on Abel's idea was given by Kronecker in 1879. Thus the question of the solution of general equations of degree higher than four was settled by Abel."

"He took up the problem of the division of the lemniscate (solving xn - 1 = 0 is the equivalent of the problem of the division of the circle into n equal arcs) and arrived at a class of algebraic equations... Abelian equations, that are solvable by radicals. The cyclotomic equation [xp - 1 = 0, where p is a prime] is an example... In this last work he introduced two notions (though not the terminology), field and polynomial irreducible in a given field. By a field of numbers he, like Galois later, meant a collection of numbers such that the sum, difference, product, and quotient of any two numbers in the collection (except division by 0) are also in the collection. ...A polynomial is said to be reducible in a field (usually the field to which its coefficients belong) if it can be expressed as a product of two polynomials of lower degrees and with coefficients in the field. Abel then tackled the problem of characterizing all equations which are solvable by radicals and had communicated some results... just before death overtook him in 1829."

"In Leibnitz's day... equations of the 2d, 3d, and 4th degrees were reduced to pure equations, but the reduction of equations of higher degrees than the 4th remained an unsolved problem, on which mathematicians spent much labor, until Niels Henrik Abel... a Norwegian mathematician of great ability and acuteness, demonstrated (1824) that the quintic equation and a fortiori the general equation of any order higher than five, is incapable of solution by radicals. Cf. Abel, Démonstration de l'impossibilité de la résolution algébrique des équations générates qui passent le quatriéme degré"

"He was sent in 1815 to the cathedral school of Christiania, where he did not show any remarkable sign of progress, until 1818 when M. Holmboe, a newly-appointed professor of mathematics, afterwards the writer of Abel's life, and editor of his works, discovered his talent for mathematics, and aided him in pursuing those sciences beyond the elements."

"In the obituary published by Crelle, in his "Journal," he states distinctly that the large number of important memoirs which Abel had ready for publication was the immediate reason of the "Journal" being undertaken."

"Nothing can be a severer trial to a mathematician's character than the publication of his loose papers; but, however crude the speculation, Abel is never lowered. He had read comparatively so little, that all which he has left bears the stamp of his own most original power; and there is not much which fails to leave the impression made on Legendre by his treatment of elliptic functions. ...The frankness of the acknowledgment made by Legendre, and the spirited manner in which the old man set to work to incorporate the new discoveries into his own books, will never be forgotten by any biographer of Abel. It is unnecessary to specify the particular methods of the latter; all who study the subject of elliptic functions are fully aware how much is due to him."

"He appears to have fully developed in his own mind the subject of the separation of symbols of operation and quantity, not indeed to the extent of founding its results upon an algebraical theory, but to that of giving the theory a wider amount of application. He was a daring generalizer, and sometimes went too far: had he lived, he would have corrected some of his writings. And yet he appears to have been deeply impressed with the notion that a great part of mathematical analysis is rendered unsound by the employment of divergent series."

"Niels Henrik Abel... wrote a series of mathematical papers that secures him a position among the greatest mathematicians of all time. In his Mémoire sur les équations algébriques... Abel proves the impossibility of solving general equations of the fifth and higher degrees by means of radicals. The paper was published at Oslo in 1824 at Abel's own expense. In order to save printing costs, he had to give the paper in a very summary form, which in a few places affects the lucidity of his reasoning."

"After the solutions of the third and fourth degrees had been found by Cardano and Ferrari, the problem of solving the equation of the fifth degree had been the object of innumerable futile attempts by mathematicians of the 17th and 18th centuries. Abel's paper shows clearly why these attempts must fail, and opens the road to the modern theory of equations, including group theory and the solution of equations by means of transcendental functions."

"Abel proposed himself the problem of finding all equations solvable by radicals, and succeeded in solving all equations with commutative groups, now called Abelian equations. Among Abel's other achievements are the discovery of the elliptic functions and their fundamental properties, his famous theorem on the integration of algebraic functions [and] theorems on power series."

"Having found a method differing from that of Ferrari for reducing the solution of the general biquadratic equation to that of a cubic equation, Euler had the idea that he could reduce the problem of the quintic equation to that of solving a biquadratic, and Lagrange made the same attempt. The failures of such able mathematicians led to the belief that such a reduction might be impossible. The first noteworthy attempt to prove that an equation of the fifth degree could not be solved by algebraic methods is due to Ruffini (1803, 1805), although it had already been considered by Gauss. The modern theory of equations is commonly said to date from Abel and Galois. ...Abel showed that the roots of a general quintic equation cannot be expressed in terms of its coefficients by means of radicals."

"The mathematical sciences have sustained a great loss in the premature death of M. Abel, whose brilliant discoveries, when quite young, raised the highest expectations of the fruits of his maturer years. Although his labours are but partially known in this country, we hope that a short account of his life will not be unacceptable to our readers. Niels Henrik Abel was born... 1802 at Frindöe... where his father was a clergyman. He showed at first no marks of genius; but at the age of 16... his extraordinary talent for mathematics at once began to develop itself, and be rapidly studied Euler's Introduction to Analysis, his Differential and Integral Calculus, the works of Lacroix, Francœur, Poisson, Gauss, and especially those of La Grange. He next entered the University of the same city. Having lost his father, and being without fortune, he availed himself of the assistance usually granted there to the poorer students; and, besides, had afterwards an allowance conferred on him by the Government. In I820 he published his first paper, intitled "A general method of finding functions of a variable quantity, a property of these functions being expressed by an equation between two variable quantities." Some time after be imagined he had succeeded in finding the general solution of equations of the fifth degree. Having perceived his error, be resolved not to desist until he had either accomplished that solution, or demonstrated the impossibility of the general solution of equations of a higher degree than the fourth. In the latter task he succeeded: his paper was printed in 1824, at Christiania, in the French language. At the recommendation of some Professors of Christiania, he now obtained from the Government an allowance for two years, in order to prosecute his studies abroad. Having spent the allotted time principally at Berlin and Paris, he returned to Christiania. During his absence from his country he published some excellent papers, among which those on Elliptic Functions, which have been honoured with the highest praise by the distinguished veteran Le Gendre, the discoverer of this branch of analysis. ...at the same time, and unknown to him, another young mathematician, Professor Jacobi of Königsberg... began to cultivate with the greatest success the same abstruse part of mathematical analysis. After his return to Christiania M. Abel had at first no regular appointment; and only a short time before his death he began to receive a fixed salary. Unfortunately, his assiduous labours, and the anxiety of mind caused by the uncertainty of his prospects, had undermined his delicate health; and his short career was suddenly terminated on the 6th of April, 1829... A very acceptable offer, made to him by the Prussian Government, of a Professorship in the University of Berlin, reached Christiania a few days after his death."

"I am particularly concerned about the recent allegations of mass persecutions of LGBTI people in the Chechen Republic of the Russian Federation. Discrimination and violence against LGBTI people is the worst kind of populism. Using minorities as scapegoats is unfortunately a growing trend. It is dangerous to democracy and governments must do all they can to stop it."

"Societies based on human rights, democracy and the rule of law need strong anti-discrimination laws, which are properly applied, and policies to integrate minorities and protect their rights. We also need to tackle irresponsible political dialogue inciting people to hatred and prejudice."

"Do we have to let every tree stay up and rot in the way that all our forests will turn into impassable thickets that are nicely called virgin forests? And just in order to ensure that every furniture beetle and cockroach can live a diverse and happy life. We the Finns are close to nature but why would we conserve so much that we run out of bread?"

"It has been thought, correctly and nicely, that everyone who is in peril will be helped. Practically this is implemented in the way that everyone who can say the word "asylum" is allowed to enter Europe and Finland, that word creates a subjective right to cross the border. Even for no proper reason, one gets a full investigation that lasts years, and if the preconditions for an asylum are not met, one can avoid coercive measures and thus stay in the country which he entered wrongly."

"One may oppose immigration. It is an opinion of one's own. But questioning the dignity of an immigrant is unacceptable. (...) I have not seen that these people [the leaders of the Finns Party] who have been convicted exactly of insulting dignity would have shown efficient regretting."

"The masks have now been taken off, showing only the face of war."

"Finland must apply for NATO membership without delay"

"The surprise was that he took it so calmly"

"Turkey’s concern over terrorism needs to be taken seriously. A large amount of Turkish people, ordinary citizens, have lost their lives in terrorist attacks."

"On our official visit to Turkey in 2015, together with my spouse, we could at close range follow the aftermath of an attack in Ankara; then we wanted to show our compassion to the loved ones of the victims and to condemn the act."

"Finland condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and works actively to prevent it. Finland’s approach and deeds in fighting terrorism are already now fully aligned with the general line of NATO countries, also regarding the terrorism Turkey is facing. Also in this respect, the conditions of our membership are met."

"The dialogue with Turkey on this situation needs to continue."

"In Finland, an amendment of the criminal code came into force this year. It expands and makes stricter the punishable scope of terrorism crimes. I also want to stress that when Finland respects the international human rights principles, and the laws that have been derived from them, it is in no way in contradiction with effective counter-terrorism measures."

"I can naturally not state the positions of Sweden, but according to my understanding our approaches are quite similar."

"Among the workers there is spreading a theory of the absolute blessedness of peace, which is a scandal to the intelligence and moral energy of our age; a hotch-potch of phrases, so clear that everybody reposts them, and so miserable that every man who is a man throws them overboard at once when the majesty of war arises in bodily form before the people."

"The conquest of lands beyond the Atlantic is now the first aim of the European fleets. For, as the aim of human civilisation is the aristocracy of the white race over the whole globe, the importance of any nation will in the end be determined by the share it has in the domination of the transatlantic world. Hence the Fleet becomes more and more important in our time. [...] We must and will have our share in the control of the globe by the white race."

"The enlargement of Prussian power is little by little becoming a demand of justice."

"Martial force is the basis of all political virtues; in the rich treasure of Germany's glories the Prussian military glory is a jewel as precious, as loyally acquired as the masterpieces of our poets and our thinkers; the sacred character of the allegiance to the flag is a witness to the moral force of our people. Therefore let our Liberalism return to those ancient German convictions."

"All treaties between nations are valid only with the reservation clause: rebus sic stantibus. They do not pledge a State for ever."

"...One thing alone can drive us, against our will, beyond these modest desires. If the next French attack against the German Empire found the Dutch among the enemy faction, at that exact moment Holland, by her senseless mistrust, would herself be precipitated into her ruin. Then, and only then, would it be necessary to attempt to put an end once and for all to the millenary struggle over the ruins of ancient Lotharingia, and once more to compel the countries of the Lower Rhine perforce to rejoin the great people whom they abandoned long ago. Holland holds in her hands the means of averting, by a just and fearless policy, these interminable conflagrations. The majestic progress of German affairs, the unity of our Empire from the North Sea to Lake Constance, the complete organisation of this unity are not to be impeded by the outcries of small peoples who cannot forget the splendour of past days."

"Our military organisation remains a glorious manifestation of German political idealism; without admitting the fact, all our neighbours regret that they have not been able, some because of the inadequacy of their culture, others because of their extreme individualism, to imitate these institutions with complete success."

"Those who preach the nonsense of eternal peace do not understand Aryan national life."

"War is elevating, because the individual disappears before the great conception of the state…. What a perversion of morality to wish to abolish heroism among men!"

"God will see to it that war always recurs as a drastic medicine for the human race."

"A thousand touching traits testify to the sacred power of the love which a righteous war awakes in noble nations."

"The Nazi party had been too hasty in incorporating the word ‘Socialist’ in its title, Hitler indeed wished it to be ‘Social Revolutionary.’"

"Hitler expressed it in a form which made it intelligible to the masses. ‘We do not want any other god than Germany itself. It is essential to have fanatical faith and hope and love in and for Germany.’"

"The great modern mass-parties, first the foremost the Fascists, have re-discovered an old historical truth which seemed long since buried: that men often and masses almost always pay service not to their interests but to their illusions."

"At Munich, at the time of the Soviet Republic, he [Hitler] interceded with his comrades on behalf of the Social-Democratic Government and, in heated discussions, espoused the cause of Social Democracy against that of the Communists."

"They could resign themselves to the Republic no less than the big industrialists, who did not favour the various abortive revolts and did not, for the most part, encourage National-Socialism."

"Before the war [World War I] the anti-Semitic movement was of no political importance in Germany."

"Karl Marx was himself an anti-Semite: that is to say, an opponent of bourgeois Jewry. Inversely, most Jews are anti-Marxist."

"At length a force of three million S.A. men was pushing on behind him [Röhm], and God knew whither they were pushing. There were large numbers of Communists and Social Democrats among them; many of the storm troopers were called ‘beefsteaks—brown and red within. Jest were retailed such as the following: one S.A. man says to another: ‘In our storm troop there are three Nazis, but we shall soon have spewed them out."

"The bourgeois, even the Nationalist Press, began to take fright and talk of Bolshevism and Hitler himself boasted: ‘In our movement the two extremes come together: the Communists from the Left and the officers and students from the Right. These two have always been the most active elements, and it was the greatest crime that they used to oppose each other in street fights.’… Our party has already succeeded in uniting these two utter extremes within the ranks of our storm troops. They will form the core of the great German liberation movement, in which all without distinction will stand together when the day comes to say: The Nation arises, the storm is breaking!’"

"Röhm coined the slogan that there must be ‘second revolution’, this time, not against the Left, but against the Right; in his diary Goebbels agreed with him. On April 18 he maintained that this second revolution was being discussed ‘everywhere among the people’; in reality, he said, this only meant that first one was not yet ended. ‘Now we shall soon have to settle with the reaction. The revolution must nowhere call a halt."

"He [Hitler] had learned much from Leon Trotzky, whose slogan of the permanent revolution he now adopted: ‘The German Revolution will not be concluded until the whole of the German nation is given a new form, a new organization, and a new structure.’"

"The twenty-six-year-old Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler youth, who could boast of standing close to Hitler, declared bluntly in those revolutionary June weeks: ‘A socialist and anti-capitalist attitude is the most salient characteristic of the Young National Socialist Germany.’"

"A collection of national histories, whether on a larger or a smaller scale, is not what we mean by Universal History, for in such a work the general connection of things is liable to be obscured. To recognise this connection, to trace the sequence of those great events which link all nations together and control their destinies, is the task which the science of Universal History undertakes."

"But historical development does not rest on the tendency towards civilisation alone. It arises also from impulses of a very different kind, especially from the rivalry of nations engaged in conflict with each other for the possession of the soil or for political supremacy. It is in and through this conflict, affecting as it does all the domain of culture, that the great empires of history are formed. In their unceasing struggle for dominion the peculiar characteristics of each nation are modified by universal tendencies, but at the same time resist and react upon them."

"Universal History would degenerate into mere theory and speculation if it were to desert the firm ground of national history, but just as little can it afford to cling to this ground alone. The history of each separate nation throws light on the history of humanity at large; but there is a general historical life, which moves progressively from one nation or group of nations to another. In the conflict between the different national groups Universal History comes into being, while, at the same time, the sense of nationality is aroused, for nations do not draw their impulses to growth from themselves alone. Nationalities so powerful and distinct as the English or the Italian are not so much the offspring of the soil and the race as of the great events through which they have passed."

"To history has been attributed the function to judge the past, to instruct ourselves for the advantage of the future. Such a lofty function the present work does not attempt. It aims merely to show how it actually took place."

"Rigorous presentation of the facts, however conditional and lacking in beauty they may be, is without question the supreme law."

"The ultimate aim of historical writing is the bringing before us the whole truth."

"You are in the first place a Christian: I am in the first place a historian. There is a gulf between us."

"Ranke has not only written a larger number of mostly excellent books than any man that ever lived, but he has taken pains from the first to explain how the thing is done. He attained a position unparalleled in literature, less by the display of extraordinary faculties than by perfect mastery of the secret of his craft, and that secret he has always made it his business to impart. For his most eminent predecessors, history was applied politics, fluid law, religion exemplified, or the school of patriotism. Ranke was the first German to pursue it for no purpose but its own. He tried to make the generality of educated men understand how it came about that the world of the fifteenth century was changed into the Europe of the nineteenth. His own definite persuasions regarding church and king were not suffered to permeate his books. It was meritorious in Böckh, but not heroic, to contain his feelings about the Attic treasure and the setting of Arcturus; but Ranke was concerned with all the materials of abiding conflict, with every cause for which he cared and men are willing to kill or die."

"What one hears in Ranke. The whisper of statecraft. Not the tramp of democracy's earthquake feet. Not the dull roar of surging opinion."

"Sagacity in judging the value of testimony is his only supreme quality."

"While an admirable critic of sources, Niebuhr read into his version of Roman history a variety of moral and philosophical views unwarranted by the existing evidence... Ranke, on the other hand, determined to hold strictly to the facts of history, to preach no sermon, to point no moral, to adorn no tale, but to tell the simple historic truth. His sole ambition was to narrate things as they really were "wie es eigentlich gewesen". Truth and objectivity were Ranke's highest aims. In his view, history is not for entertainment or edification, but for instruction... He did not believe in the historian's province to point out divine providence in human history."

"That history became "scientific" in the third quarter of the nineteenth century was probably due as much to the influence of Ranke as to the influence of natural science."

"No one else has been able to speak with equal authority on the history of so many nations, Grote wrote nothing on the history of Rome, Mommsen has written nothing on the history of Greece. Ranke was equally at home in the Germany of the Reformation, in the France of Louis XIV., and in the England of Charles I. and Cromwell."

"Ranke is cold and unenthusiastic; and, in judging individuals, it is well to be cold and unenthusiastic. But is there no room for warmth of feeling in recounting the efforts and the struggles of the race? Is it not possible to do for history what Darwin has done for science? Ranke, at all events, did not do it. He knew of the influence upon individuals of great waves of feeling and opinion; but he does not seek for the law of human progress which underlies them. He does not rejoice in that progress, or grieve at failure. Hence, perhaps, in part his preference for writing the history of many nations during the same period, rather than the history of one nation consecutively. To say this, however, is only to say that there is no finality in scientific progress. Whatever shape the histories of the future may take, they will assuredly be built on the foundations which Ranke has laid down with unerring hand."

"[T]he history of German historical thought since Ranke's time has to a large extent been nothing but the spiritual and philosophical (weltanschauliche) debate about his legacy."

"Beyond question even Von Ranke, the leading exponent of colorless history, did not succeed in being wholly objective; much of his work was unconsciously written from the standpoint of the conservative reaction of his time in Prussia."

"Ranke developed no further the implications of his theory than to ensure a reproduction of a living past, as perfect as with the sources at his disposal and the political instincts of his time it was possible to secure... [Ranke was] concrete, definite, searching for minute details, maintaining his own objectivity by insisting upon the subjectivity of the materials he handles."

"Leopold von Ranke is not only beyond all comparison the greatest historical scholar alive, but one of the very greatest historians that ever lived. Unrivalled stores of knowledge, depth of research, intimate acquaintance with the most recondite sources, have been, in his case, supplemented by everything which could be conferred by a long life, continuous study, close association with the great political actors and thinkers of the greatest part of the most eventful century of the world's history."

"Ranke did not stop at concrete description but attempted to pierce the deepest and most mysterious movements of life."

"Though standards vary, greatness remains; indeed it is the true mark of greatness that it can survive changing standards. Shakespeare was great to Johnson; great to Coleridge; is great to us. Ranke was a historian of the same grandeur – great to his contemporaries, still great after the passage of a century; if not the greatest of historians, securely within the first half-dozen. Great as a scholar, great as a master of narrative, Ranke has the special claim of having achieved something more than his work; he founded a school, the school of scientific historians, which has dominated all historical thinking since his time, even when in reaction against it."

"[T]he chief criticism against Ranke and the Ranke school of “objective” and “scientific” history is its total unphilosophicalness. Far from being scientific, Ranke was profoundly biassed; we have seen that he observed God’s handiwork in all history; he made no attempt at formulating a genuine philosophy or psychology."

"The lectures of Ranke, the most eminent of German historians, I could not follow. He had a habit of becoming so absorbed in his subject, as to slide down in his chair, hold his finger up toward the ceiling, and then, with his eye fastened on the tip of it, to go mumbling through a kind of rhapsody, which most of my German fellow-students confessed they could not understand. It was a comical sight: half a dozen students crowding around his desk, listening as priests might listen to the sibyl on her tripod, the other students being scattered through the room, in various stages of discouragement."

"Despite this deplorable situation of landing in enemy territory without a rifle, I still wasn't scared. Don't ask me why. Fear paralyzes the mind but I needed to be able to think clearly, especially when men's lives were at stake. Though I had been apprehensive whether or not I would measure up, the long months of training now kicked in. Before jumping, I'd though of cutting the top of my chute off and using the silk as a raincoat, both protection against the cold and for camouflage. But now, the only thing on my mind was to get the hell away from those machine guns and that town. Just as I started off, trench knife in hand, another paratrooper landed close by. I helped cut him free from his chute, then grabbed one of his grenades, and said, "let's go search for my equipment." He was hesitant of taking the lead even with his tommy gun, so I said, "Follow me!""

"Even though Easy Company was still widely scattered, the small portion that fought at Brecourt had demonstrated the remarkable ability of the airborne trooper to fight, albeit outnumbered, and win. This sort of combat typified the independent action that characterized the American airborne divisions that jumped in Normandy. Once the battle began, discipline and training overcame our individual and collective fears."

"Never, ever give up regardless of the adversity. If you are a leader, a fellow who other fellows look to, you have to keep going. How will you know if you have succeeded? True satisfaction comes from getting the job done. The key to successful leadership is to earn respect- not because of rank or position, but because you are a leader of character. In the military, the president of the United States may nominate you as a commissioned officer, but he cannot command for you the loyalty and confidence of your soldiers. Those you must earn by giving loyalty to your soldiers and providing for their welfare. Properly led and treated right, your lowest-ranking soldier is capable of extraordinary acts of valor. Ribbons, medals, and accolades, then, are poor substitutes to the ability to look yourself in the mirror every night and know that you did your best."

"I was extremely blessed to have been the commander of Easy Company. No single individual "deserved" the privilege of leading such a remarkable group of warriors into battle. And to this day, I am humbled by that experience."

"The shadows are lengthening for those of us who fought in World War II. In the twilight of our lives, our thoughts return to happier days, when we struggled together not as individuals, but as a team- a team that willingly sacrificed itself to protect its members. Sixty years after our final victory, these men remain different. Not one man walks around wearing his wings or medals on his chest to stand out. It is what each man carries in his chest that makes him different. It is the confidence, pride, and character that make the World War II generation stand out in any crowd. I'm proud to have been a small part of it. I certainly harbor no regrets. And not a day goes by that I don't think of the men I served with who never had the opportunity to enjoy a world of peace."

"I wish to convey a final thought- and I hope it doesn't sound out of place- but I would like to share something as I look back on the war. War brings out the worst and the best in people. Wars do not make men great, but they do bring out the greatness in good men. War is romantic only to those who are far away from the sounds and turmoil of battle. For those of us who served in Easy Company and for those who served their country in other theaters, we came back as better men and women as the result of being in combat, and most would do it again if called upon. But each of us hoped that if we had learned anything from the experience, it is that war is unreal and we earnestly hoped that it would never happen again."

"1. Strive to be a leader of character, competence, and courage. 2. Lead from the front. Say, "Follow me!" and then lead the way. 3. Stay in top physical shape- physical stamina is the root of mental toughness. 4. Develop your team. If you know your people, are fair in setting realistic goals and expectations, and lead by example, you will develop teamwork. 5. Delegate responsibility to your subordinates and let them do their jobs. You can't do a good job if you don't have a chance to use your imagination or your creativity. 6. Anticipate problems and prepare to overcome obstacles. Don't wait until you get to the top of the ridge and then make up your mind. 7. Remain humble. Don't worry about who receives the credit. Never let power or authority go to your head. 8. Take a moment of self-reflection. Look at yourself in the mirror every night and ask yourself if you did your best. 9. True satisfaction comes from getting the job done. The key to a successful leader is to earn respect- not because of rank or position, but because you are a leader of character. 10. Hang Tough!- Never, ever give up."

"Easy Company had a reputation- because of our captains, Herbert Sobel and Dick Winters- as the toughest and best. Since the Army lacked manpower, we were always sent in to take up the slack. As trained as we were, as good as we were, it was chaos, death was all around, you knew any minute could be your last. We froze, we starved, we were covered in filth, we were exhausted, we lost good kids every day, we saw things people don't see in ten lifetimes. When we thought we were beaten down as far as we could go, we were kept on the front lines. I never expected to survive a day, let alone the whole war. We lost a lot of men, but we inflicted more casualties on the Germans than they inflicted on us. In Bastogne, they had three times the men and three times the firepower. I have no idea how we done it. I still can't believe we won the war."

"Winters gave the order to go. Lieutenant Welsh ran out with a few men from 1st Platoon behind him, and all hell broke loose. The Germans opened up on us with an MG-42 straight up the road. Everybody froze in the ditch. We were pinned down by machine-gun fire. If you lifted your head it would get blown off. Winters didn't care, he wanted everyone to move out, he wanted us right behind Welsh. He was yelling "Go! Go! Go!" but no one budged. He ran into the middle of the road, bullets flying by his head, running from one side of the road to the other and back, screaming and yelling like a lunatic, trying to get us to move out. Everybody was looking at each other saying "Is he friggin' nuts? He thinks we're going to get up?!" I never saw Winters that mad in my life. I think we figured Winters was going to get himself killed, so we better get the hell up. We ran right through the machine-gun fire, and I think Welsh took out the main gun with a grenade."

"I remember him as if it were yesterday. The old soldier emerged from the elevator in the hotel lobby at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, dapperly attired in a dark blazer with the crest of the 101st Airborne Division on his pocket. His neatly cropped gray hair reflected a military man far younger than his current seventy-nine-plus years. I am not sure what I had expected to see. At the time of our initial encounter, most veterans of World War II were in their late seventies or early eighties. Most veterans who visited West Point to share their reminiscences with the cadets walked with the aid of canes or walkers. In Winters's case, there was a noticeable spring in his step that belied his age. This shy, quiet gentleman who introduced himself simply as "Dick Winters" immediately made an indelible impression on me. From the beginning, I was "Cole," he was "Dick." Never once for the next thirteen years did we ever address each other by rank or surname. Over dinner Dick and I discussed a myriad of topics, all associated with his wartime experience and his thoughts on leadership in war. Why were some commanders more effective than others in inspiring their men? How did you identify the best soldiers in your company? Had he relieved any commander in combat? To what did he attribute his success in Easy Company? Were his leadership principles applicable to the civilian and the corporate worlds? Minutes evolved into hours as we discussed leadership under a number of circumstances. Before we finished dinner, I had already decided that I would include Dick Winters in the book I was writing about combat leadership in World War II. To my great satisfaction, he invited me to spend a few days on his farm outside Fredericksburg, Pennsylvania. By the time that the evening was over, I had received the best primer on leadership than I had obtained in twenty-five years of commissioned service."

"I last visited Dick Winters on October 30, 2010. Three weeks earlier, I had grasped his hand and told him how much he meant to me and that he was my dearest friend. He looked at me and directed me to "hang in there." Now, at the end of October, Dick was definitely approaching his final days. He did not look very well, and I suspected he did not have much time remaining. Ethel, too, tired easily, but her spirits were high. When Mary and I entered the house, I wondered if it would be our final visit. Dick laughed when we reminisced about the first time he had met Mary and demanded, "Tell me about yourself!" I reminded Dick that to Mary's eternal consterntation, he would always remain my best friend and Mary merely my best female friend. He just smiled with that familiar twinkle in his eye. While Mary and Ethel conversed, I took the opportunity to speak to Dick in muffled tones. I think we both realized that the end was approaching, but he refused to concede defeat. "I'm comfortable where I am now. I realize my time is short, but I am at peace," Dick said. I couldn't help but think that his mind was already over the next hill, where his wartime comrades were standing at attention, awaiting their commander's arrival. We mostly spoke about the beauty of the autumn leaves, the birds, and the flowers outside his window. As I rose to leave, I leaned over and whispered, "Dick, the country was blessed to have had you in its hour of need. I will always cherish our time together. I love you as my brother." These were my final words to Major Dick Winters. "Don't ever change that," he responded with a tear in his eye."

"The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to First Lieutenant (Infantry) Richard D. Winters (ASN: 0-1286582), United States Army, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy while serving with Company E, 2d Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, in action against enemy forces on 6 June 1944, in France. First Lieutenant Winters with seven enlisted men, advanced through intense enemy automatic weapons fire, putting out of action two guns of the battery of four 88-mm. that were shelling the beachhead. Unswerving in his determination to complete his self-appointed and extremely hazardous task, First Lieutenant Winters and his group withdrew for reinforcements. He returned with tank support and the remaining two guns were put out of action, resulting in decreased opposition to our forces landing on the beachhead. First Lieutenant Winters' heroic and determined leadership exemplify the highest traditions of the military forces of the United States and reflect great credit upon himself, the 101st Airborne Division, and the United States Army."

"I will defend my right to confess my faith, so that no one else would be deprived of their right to freedom of religion and speech. I hold to the view that my expressions are legal, and they should not be censored. I will not back down from my views. I will not be intimidated into hiding my faith."

"I don’t think I’ve been guilty of threatening, slandering of disparaging any population group. These [statements] are all about what the Bible teaches about marriage and sexuality."

"As the war in Ukraine rages on, and Ukrainians fight bravely for their country, the European Union steps up once more its support for Ukraine and the sanctions against the aggressor – Putin's Russia. For the first time ever, the European Union will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons and other equipment to a country that is under attack. This is a watershed moment."

"I am well aware that these sanctions (imposed on Russia for their invasion on Ukraine) will come at a cost for our economy, too. I know this, and I want to speak honestly to the people of Europe. We have endured two years of (COVID-19) pandemic. And we all wished that we could focus on our economic and social recovery. But I believe that the people of Europe understand very well that we must stand up against this cruel aggression. Yes, protecting our liberty comes at a price. But this is a defining moment. And this is the cost we are willing to pay. Because freedom is priceless, Honourable Members. This is our principle: Freedom is priceless."

"I was yesterday in Kyiv and I visited Bucha. And there are no words for the horror I have seen in Bucha, the ugly face of Putin's army terrorising people. And I have so much admiration for our brave Ukrainian friends fighting against this. They are fighting our war. It is our fight that they are in. Because it is not only Ukraine fighting for its sovereignty and integrity, but they are also fighting for the question whether humanity will prevail or whether heinous devastation will be the result. It is the question whether democracy will be stronger or if it is autocracy that will dominate. It is the question whether there is the right of might dominating or whether it is the rule of law."

"Putin wanted to wipe Ukraine from the map. He will clearly not succeed. On the contrary: Ukraine has risen up in unity. And it is his own country, Russia, he is sinking. … We want Ukraine to win this war. But we also want to set the conditions for Ukraine's success in the aftermath of the war. The first step is immediate relief. … But then, in a second phase, there is the wider reconstruction effort. The scale of destruction is staggering. Hospitals and schools, houses, roads, bridges, railroads, theatres and factories — so much has to be rebuilt. … Europe has a very special responsibility towards Ukraine. With our support, Ukrainians can rebuild their country for the next generation. … This will bring the stability and certainty needed to make Ukraine an attractive destination for foreign direct investment. And eventually, it will pave the way for Ukraine's future inside the European Union. Slava Ukraini and long live Europe."

"My thoughts are with the people of Greece. The whole of Europe is mourning with you. I also wish for a speedy recovery for all the injured."

"Since the start of this new mandate, we have left no stone unturned to make our Union faster and simpler, more focused and more supportive of European companies. But Simplification alone is not enough. Our rules must also be properly implemented by EU Member States, and when this does not happen, we must take action. Simplification, implementation, and enforcement go hand in hand. Better regulation is key to our success. Simplification and Implementation (October 21, 2025)"

"This is the European conception of life. It is about building a Union of equality in which we all have the same access to opportunities. It is about equipping people with the knowledge, education and skills they need to live and work in dignity. It is about having access to the services we need and the knowledge that we are safe in our homes and in our streets. It is about protecting the most vulnerable in our society. Ultimately, it is about how we all live together."

"This European way of life came at a great price and sacrifice. It should never be taken for granted – it is neither a given nor a guarantee. The proof of that is that our way of living is being challenged every day – as much by anti-Europeans from within as from without. We have seen foreign powers interfere in our elections from the outside. And we have seen home-grown populists with cheap nationalistic slogans try to destabilise us from the inside. We should not allow these forces to hijack the definition of the European way of life. They want it to mean the opposite of what it is. They want to chip away at our foundations and sow division amongst us. They believe in politics that exposes problems, rather than solves them. We must fight back against this."

"We all have our own traditions, our own set of values and own way of doing things. But I would always choose Europe’s way of life – and our Union of solidarity, tolerance and reliability – over any other. The European way of life also means listening and debating with one another to find solutions for the common good. And this is what I want us to do together."

"It is the moment to show them that we can build a continent where you can be who you are, love who you want, and aim as high as you want."

"Hospitals are postponing treatment because of lack of nurses. And two-thirds of European companies are looking for IT specialists."

"Eight million young people are neither in employment, education or training. Their dreams (are) put on hold, their lives on standby, This is not only the cause of so much personal distress. It is also one of the most significant bottlenecks for our competitiveness."

"Competition is only true as long as it is fair, Too often, our companies are excluded from foreign markets or are victims of predatory practices. They are often undercut by competitors benefitting from huge state subsidies."

"And as we do not accept this from the inside, we do not accept this from the outside."

"Europe is open to competition but not for a race to the bottom. We must defend ourselves against unfair practices."

"Four years ago, the European Green Deal was our answer to the call of history. And this summer – the hottest ever on record in Europe – was a stark reminder of that."

"Loss of nature destroys not only the foundations of our life but also our feeling of what constitutes home."

"Food security, in harmony with nature, remains an essential task, I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to our farmers, to thank them for providing us with food day after day."

"In a world where some are trying to pick off countries one by one, we cannot afford to leave our fellow Europeans behind, In a world where size and weight matter, it is clearly in Europe's strategic and security interests to complete our Union."

"We need to move past old, binary debates about enlargement. This is not a question of deepening integration or widening the Union,We can and we must do both."

"The good news is that with every enlargement those who said it would make us less efficient were proven wrong."

"We should bring all of this work together towards minimum global standards for safe and ethical use of AI."

"There was a strange aftertaste to many of the calls for grand social reform in 2020. As the coronavirus crisis overtook us, the left wing on both sides of the Atlantic, at least that part that had been fired up Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, was going down to defeat. The promise of a radicalized and reenergized left, organized around the idea of the Green New Deal, seemed to dissipate amidst the pandemic. It fell to governments mainly of the center and the right to meet the crisis. They were a strange assortment. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the United States experimented with denial. For them climate skepticism and virus skepticism went hand in hand. In Mexico, the notionally left-wing government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador also pursued a maverick path, refusing to take drastic action. Nationalist strongmen like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Narendra Modi in India, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey did not deny the virus, but relied on their patriotic appeal and bullying tactics to see them through. It was the managerial centrist types who were under most pressure. Figures like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in the United States, or Sebastián Piñera in Chile, or Cyril Ramaphosa in South Africa, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen, and their ilk in Europe. They accepted the science. Denial was not an option. They were desperate to demonstrate that they were better than the 'populists.' To meet the crisis, very middle-of-the-road politicians ended up doing very radical things. Most of it was improvisation and compromise, but insofar as they managed to put a programmatic gloss on their responses—whether in the form of the EU's Next Generation program or Biden's Build Back Better program in 2020—it came from the repertoire of green modernization, sustainable development, and the Green New Deal."

"And regardless of what surprises von der Leyen might have coming (in the 2023 State of the Union address), don’t expect to laugh."

"Through my actions, the ones of the parliamentary opposition and through the citizens’ mobilization, Romania succeeded in preserving its pro-European and democratic course and this seems to me the most important achievement of my term."

"I am very proud of my country, and the two main priorities of my mandate addressed precisely these concerns. The first, to uphold the fight against corruption, to strengthen the rule of law and to preserve the independence of the judiciary. The second, to consolidate Romania’s role within the European Union and to represent our country in the European institutions with dignity. Close to the end of my term now, I can say I have succeeded in fulfilling both of these priorities."

"We have advanced the European Agenda in an inclusive manner, with Romania acting as an honest broker and succeeding to achieve impressive results."

"Since the beginning of my term, my vision for Romania was to build a strong and prosperous country, where the projects we have started are finalized, where the law is the same for everyone, and where people are appreciated and fairly paid for their work. Romanians want the same things as the Germans or any other European citizens do: to live a prosperous and safe life in a country able to provide all the necessary premises to build a good future for themselves and for their children."

"Thirty years after the fall of communism, the democratic and European option is stronger than ever in Romania."

"What the European Union does, from my perspective, is well done and it helps everyone. But as it happens in politics, good news are not news and we do not talk about these aspects."

"For me, people have always been more important than money. This is why I stressed this principle in my approaches towards the media, but also in the European Council. In some areas we feel the tendency to leave people behind and handle trade our industrial issues."

"We serve our people when working with the United Nations, and each and every citizen needs to see a concrete impact on his or her daily life, and a positive change."

"We have to explain that we face serious threats to security, that terrorism needs a globally coordinated response, that proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery remain existential threats to global security."

"We also need an integrated and innovative approach to respond simultaneously to a whole range of inter-related challenges, such as health, demographic changes, migration, scarce resources, climate change and biodiversity loss, extreme poverty and hunger."

"Recently we have also witnessed the potential and the challenges of digital technologies. We must ensure meaningful and safe access to the Internet, strengthen cybersecurity and promote responsible behavior in the cyberspace, while addressing the digital spread of hatred and disinformation."

"The concept of resilience is an important component of our security, as well as a key factor in protecting democracy."

"Last, but not least, let me remind us that an international organization is as strong as the political willingness of its member States to make it relevant and fit for the times we are living in. Let us all join efforts to achieve the United Nations’ noble goals!"

"History has shown us time and again that the spirit of our nation cannot be defeated. Those who now want to divide us and return us to a dark past, which no Romanian wants anymore, will not succeed. And they will not succeed because our strength lies precisely in our unity and in our common belief in freedom and democracy."

"Therefore, I urge you that in the new year we regain our confidence and not lose hope for a moment that, together, we can keep Romania on its pro-Western path, guided by the fundamental principles and values ​​that define us – justice, freedom and democracy, for which our fellow citizens have paid the ultimate price."

"[They] lead a very quiet, honest and virtuous life infinitely outdoing our false Christians and superficial pretenders to a better sort of religion."

"Yet he considered it his duty to destroy idol worship, and wrote how he had destroyed idols in a prominent goddess temple. The Hindus were described as ‘being deeply affected with the sight so foppish a set of Gods’, and he proudly ‘threw some down to the ground, and striking off the heads of others’. He wanted to demonstrate to the ‘deluded’ Hindus that ‘their images were nothing but impotent and still idols, unable to protect themselves and much less their worshippers’. The most remarkable part of this incident was that the Hindus who gathered at the scene of destruction were agitated, but did not allow their agitation to turn violent. One man he described as a ‘pagan school teacher (upadhyayan )’ calmly entered into a theological debate and proceeded to show the missionary the folly of his actions. He concluded the debate by pointing out to the missionary that from the point of view of absolute being, all forms of matter are constructions of Maya, and that the pottery images the missionary broke were merely symbols."

"For the last category of religions, Ziegenbalg used the word ‘heathen’ as equivalent to ‘pagan’ or ‘gentile’. It denoted non-monotheistic people and connoted ‘ignorant’ and ‘uncivilized’. All heathens, Ziegenbalg said, are under the rule of the devil, whom they worship as a god. He leads them into idolatry and superstitious rites. The devil is the father of them all, but they have divided into many sects and in Africa, America, and East India, they differ in their gods and teachings. 7"

"It was neither the powerful English nor the Dutch, but the Danes who sent the first Protestant mission to India, — to Tranquebar, an insignificant locality which they possessed in India. Zeigenbalg, the first missionary who reached India in 1706, candidly confessed that his mission had little success. He pointed out that the Christians in India were “so much debauched in their manners”, and “so given to gluttony, drunkenness, lewdness, cursing, swearing, cheating and cozening” and “proud and insulting in their conduct”, that many Indians, judging the religion by its effect upon its followers, “could not be induced to embrace Christianity”. Only a few poor or destitute persons were converted, and they had to be fed and maintained by the mission. When Ziegenbalg wanted to convert the upper classes by argument, he failed miserably. “In a notable debate held under the auspices of the Dutch in Negapatam, Ziegenbalg disputed with a Brahmin for five hours, and far from converting the Brahmin, the missionary came away with an excessive admiration for the intellectual gifts of his adversary”.(150)"

"Zeigenbalg’s missionary effort was typical of Christian missionary enterprise in India during the eighteenth century. No doubt the number of converts steadily increased and churches were founded in different parts of India. But it was the remittance from Europe that supplied the cost of building churches and feeding the congregation. Abbe Dubois (1,765-1848) published, at the end of the eighteenth or beginning of the nineteenth century, his Letters on the State of Christianity in India . In these he “asserted his opinion that under existing circumstances there was no human possibility of so overcoming the invincible barrier of Brahminical prejudice as to convert the Hindus as a nation to any sect of Christianity. He acknowledged that low castes and outcastes might be converted in large numbers, but of the higher castes he wrote: ‘Should the intercourse between individuals of both nations, by becoming more intimate and more friendly, produce a change in the religion and usages of the country, it will not be to turn Christians that they will forsake their own religion, but rather to become mere atheists.” (150-1)"

"Science christology suffers from a hitherto incurable evil: psychological conjecture."

"Sich," sprach der Greis, "hast du denn nicht gelesen: Wenn Menschen schweigen, werden Steine schreien? Nicht spotte ferner, Sohn, mit Gottes Wort! Lebendig ist es, kräftig, schneidet scharf, Wie ein zweischneidig Schwert, und sollte gleich Das Menschenherz sich ihm zum Trotz versteinen. So wird im Stein ein Menschenherz sich regen."

"Why allow yourself to get pregnant if you are not ready to have a child?"

"Please use condoms and visit family planning clinics"

"Family planning is not only for women, it is for both men and women, and even for young boys"

"It is our goal that we shall improve the lives of all Africans through this partnership, as women need to drive the engine of partnership in order to achieve the maximum impact of growth needed in Africa"

"Yes, the prayer day did not help and things did not change, but the prayers will continue and we will give GBV cases to God to deal with, because He sees the inside of a person and can understand them better than we do,” said Nghidinwa"

"The youth should be encouraged to study social work to assist in dealing with GBV. There is a huge gap that needs to be filled in this regard"

"I was told that my community are the people that hold the table which I stood on, and because I had known them and had always looked after them from where I was, I know now that I will fall back into their open arms"

"The Swapo Party has already implemented gender equality in its structures and soon it will be compulsory for all political parties to do so, according to the SADC Protocol on Gender"

"The party constitution is clear that every member shall be obliged to promote the unity in the party at all levels and shall refrain from any activity that creates disunity, sectarianism and disruption of the services of the party. Therefore, let’s leave this room as a united force"

"Our position should not be how to get rid of X, Y and Z because if we do that, we are breaking the party. Our position should be: how do we work hard to increase our numbers so that we add A, B and C to X, Y and Z? Numbers are crucial"

"Numbers give you strength. Numbers give you power. Numbers contribute financially to the growth of the party. The more the numbers, the more seats in the National Assembly, and the more money you get from the treasury"

"After careful consideration of all facts and issues at our disposal, we as leaders have decided to call off our elective congress until further notice. This is to avert possible loss of lives and unnecessary harm that might befall our members because of the current situation prevailing there"

"We plead with our members to remain calm while the leadership will deliberate and announce the way forward"

"When girls do not have adequate sanitation facilities, when they face challenges in getting sanitary pads and when they are surrounded by discriminatory social taboos about menstrual cycle, they will continue to be deprived of opportunities to participate freely and comfortably in school, at play or other social activities"

"We encourage you to keep building relationships with the relatives of these children"

"You the stakeholders must suggest how to effectively and sustainably drive a national wealth redistribution agenda, which points to high levels of skewedness with resources only vested in the handful few"

"Therefore, I thank the Office of the Governor and the entire team for your prompt actions to ensure that we bring changes to the lives of our people as we fight this war against hunger and poverty"

"I want to call upon each and every one present here, including the food bank street committee, to be poverty foot soldiers who join efforts and hands with the government in rooting out poverty from our homes and nation"

"Wenn jemand eine Reise thut, So kann er was verzählen."

"Ach die Natur schuf mich im Grimme, Sie gab mir nichts — als eine schöne Stimme!"

"Aus nichts wird nichts, das merke wohl, Wenn aus dir etwas werden soll."

"Greif' nicht leicht in ein Wespennest, Doch wenn du greifst, so stehe fest."

"Der Winter ist ein rechter Mann, Kernfest und auf die Dauer."

"Am Rhein, am Rhein, da wachsen unsre Reben; Gesegnet sey der Rhein! Da wachsen sie am Ufer hin, und geben Uns diesen Labewein."

"Haidar’s palace is a fine building in the Indian style. Opposite to it is an open place. On both sides are ranges of open buildings where the military and civil servants have their offices and constantly attend and Haidar Naik can overlook them from his balcony . . . Although Haidar sometimes rewards his servants the principal motive is fear. Two hundred people with whips stand always ready to use them. Not a day passes on which numbers are not flogged. Haidar applies the same cat to all transgressors alike, gentlemen and horse- keepers, tax-gatherers and his own sons and when he has inflicted such a public scourging upon the greatest gentlemen, he does not dismiss them. No! they remain in the same office and bear the marks of stripes on their backs as public warnings. For he seems to think that almost all people who seek to enrich themselves are devoid of all principles of honour . . . the most dreadful punishments were daily inflicted. Many who read it may think the account exaggerated, but the poor man was tied up, two men came with their whips and cut him dreadfully and with sharp nails was his flesh torn asunder and then scourged afresh, his shrieks rending the air. Although the punishments are so dreadful, yet there are people enough who seek employments and outbid each other and the Brahmins are by far the worst in this traffic."

"When I came to Haidar, he desired me to sit down alongside of him. The floor was covered with the most exquisite tapestry. He received me very politely, listened in a friendly manner and seeming pleasure to all what I had to say. He spoke very openly and without reserve and said that the Europeans had broken their solemn engagements and promises but nevertheless he was willing to live in peace with them . . ."

"When I sat near Haidar Naik, I particularly observed in what a regular succession and with what rapid dispatch his affairs proceeded one after the other. Whenever he made a pause in speaking, an account was read to him of the districts and letters received. He heard them and ordered the answers immediately. The writers ran, wrote the letters, read them and Haidar affixed his seal. Thus, one evening a great many letters were expedited. Haidar can neither read nor write but his memory is excellent. He orders one man to write a letter and read it to him. Then he calls another to read it again. If the writer has in the least deviated from his orders, his head pays for it. What religion people profess or whether they profess any at all, that is perfectly indifferent to him. He has none himself and leaves everyone to his choice. His army is under the care of four chief officers called Bakshis. One might call them paymasters. But they have to do not only with the pay but also with the recruiting services and other things which belong to an army. There are also judges that settle differences. With these men I had frequent discourses. Some spoke Persian, others only Hindustani, but all were Mahomedans. They asked what the right prayer was and to whom we ought to pray. I declared to them how we being sinful men and therefore deserving God’s curse and eternal death could not come before God but in the name of our mediator Jesus Christ. I explained to them also the Lord’s prayer. To persons who understood Tamil, I explained the doctrines in Tamil, to the others in Hindustani language. As the ministers of Haidar’s court are mainly Brahmins, I had many conversations with them. Some answered with modesty and others did not choose to talk on so great a subject and only hinted that their noble pagodas [temples] were not built in vain. I said the edifices may indeed serve for some use but not the idols which they adored. Without the fort were some hundred Europeans commanded by a Frenchman and a squadron of Hussars under the command of Captain Budene, a German. Part of these troops were German, others Frenchmen. I found also some Malabar Christians. Every Sunday I performed Divine Service in German and in Malayalam without asking anybody’s leave . . . we sang, preached and prayed and nobody presumed to hinder us . . . In Haidar Naik’s palace the high and low come to me and asked what our doctrine was, so that I could speak as long as I had strength. Haidar’s youngest son saw and saluted me in the Durbar or hall of audience. He sent to request me to come into his apartment. I sent him word that I would gladly come if his father permitted it; without his father’s leave I might hurt both him and myself. Of this, he was perfectly sensible. The most intimate friends dare not speak their sentiments freely. Haidar has his spies everywhere. But I knew that I might speak of religion night and day without giving him the least offence. I sat often with Haidar in a hall that is open on the garden side. In the garden, trees were grafted and bore two sorts of fruit. He had also fine cypress trees, fountains, etc. I observed a number of young boys bringing some earth into the garden. On enquiry I was informed that Haidar had raised a battalion of orphans who have nobody else to provide for them and whom he educates at his expense, for he allowed no orphan to be neglected in all his dominions. He feeds and clothes them and gives little wooden firelocks with which they exercise . . ."

"On the last evening when I took my leave from Haidar, he requested me to speak Persian as I had done with his people. I did so and explained the motive of my journey to him: ‘You may perhaps wonder,’ said I, ‘what could have induced me, a priest, who has nothing to do with political concerns to come to you and that on an errand which does not belong to my sacerdotal functions. But as I was plainly told that the sole object of my journey was the preservation and confirmation of peace, and having witnessed more than once, the misery and horrors attending on war, I thought within my own mind, how happy I should deem myself if I could be of service in cementing a durable friendship between the two Governments and thus securing the blessings of peace to this devoted country and its inhabitants . . .’ He said with great cordiality: ‘Very well, very well. I am of the same opinion with you and wish that the English may be as studious of peace as you are. If they offer me the hand of peace and concord, I shall not withdraw mine.’ I then took my leave of him. On reaching my palanquin, I found that Haidar had sent three hundred rupees for my travelling expenses . . ."

"I hate equality. It is the lie of the prophets. No people is equal to another. No man is equal to another. I love the exceptional precisely because they are the exception."

"My name is surrounded with such hate and fear that no one can judge what is the truth and what is false, what is history and what myth."

"They cannot understand as yet that we are not fighting a political party but a sect of murderers of all contemporary spiritual culture."

"Our country, when you grew very old, your head was crowned with white hair. You carried steadfast your children in your arms and gave them what belonged to your coastland.We who here grew up with you as an immature people, as small children, we want to call ourselves kalâtdlit in front of your honorable head!And making use of all that belongs to you, we feel a desire to advance: bettering the conditions, which hold you back, we are firmly resolved to go forward, forward.We want very much to follow the mature people. We are longing to use the freedom of speech and press!There is not at all the slightest reason for holding back. Greenlanders, stand up on your feet, forward! It is well worth to live as men. Show that you can think for yourselves!"

"Die Warheit zu sagen, so höret oder siehet man selten einen Streit swischen ihnen; es trauen die fremdesten Leute einander mehr, als in Europa die Bekannten. Man ist auch viel aufrichtiger und liebreicher gegeneinander als in Teutschland, darum leben unsere Americaner viel ruhiger und friedsamer als die Europäer zusammen, und dieses alles macht die Freyheit, worinnen alle einander gleich sind."