"What does one do with such an old machine? It is thrown on the scrap heap. What does one do with a lame horse, with such an unproductive cow? No, I do not want to continue the comparison to the end--however fearful the justification for it and the symbolic force of it are. We are not dealing with machines, horses and cows whose only function is to serve mankind, to produce goods for man. One may smash them, one may slaughter them as soon as they no longer fulfil this function. No, we are dealing with human beings, our fellow human beings, our brothers and sisters. With poor people, sick people, if you like unproductive people. But have they for that reason forfeited the right to life?"

"It is just not true that, in the summer of 1933, when the name Galen was announced as the new Bishop, the whole diocese broke out in rejoicing...Nor is it the case that Galen was immediately recognized as being a great opponent of the despotic regime. On the contrary,the pugnacious pastor of St Lambert's was regarded, to put it bluntly, as a Nazi."

"Woe to mankind, woe to our German nation if God's Holy Commandment 'Thou shalt not kill,' which God proclaimed on Mount Sinai amidst thunder and lightning, which God our Creator inscribed in the conscience of mankind from the very beginning, is not only broken, but if this transgression is actually tolerated and permitted to go unpunished."

"Who will be able to trust his doctor any more? He may report his patient as 'unproductive' and receive instructions to kill him. It is impossible to imagine the degree of moral depravity, of general mistrust that would then spread even through families if this dreadful doctrine is tolerated, accepted and followed."

"Then, it is only necessary for some secret edict to order that the method developed for the mentally ill should be extended to other 'unproductive' people, that it should be applied to those suffering from incurable lung disease, to the elderly who are frail or invalids, to the severely disabled soldiers. Then none of our lives will be safe any more. Some commission can put us on the list of the 'unproductive,' who in their opinion have become worthless life. And no police force will protect us and no court will investigate our murder and give the murderer the punishment he deserves."

"If you establish and apply the principle that you can kill 'unproductive' fellow human beings then woe betide us all when we become old and frail! If one is allowed to kill the unproductive people then woe betide the invalids who have used up, sacrificed and lost their health and strength in the productive process. If one is allowed forcibly to remove one's unproductive fellow human beings then woe betide loyal soldiers who return to the homeland seriously disabled, as cripples, as invalids. If it is once accepted that people have the right to kill 'unproductive' fellow humans--and even if initially it only affects the poor defenseless mentally ill--then as a matter of principle murder is permitted for all unproductive people, in other words for the incurably sick, the people who have become invalids through labor and war, for us all when we become old, frail and therefore unproductive."

"Have you, have I the right to live only so long as we are productive, so long as we are recognized by others as productive?"

"These unfortunate patients must die but rather because, in the opinion of some department, on the testimony of some commission, they have become 'worthless life' because according to this testimony they are 'unproductive national comrades.' The argument goes: they can no longer produce commodities, they are like an old machine that no longer works, they are like an old horse which has become incurably lame, they are like a cow which no longer gives milk."

"And now go and serve your fatherland."

"I encouraged them, each who was able, to serve the Fatherland...I have done this [volunteered] because I believe I must be a good example for my community."

"If we are disappointed that men give little heed to what we utter is it for their sake or our own?"

"Be content that others have position, if thou hast ability: that others have riches, if thou hast virtue."

"When with all thy heart thou strivest to live with truth and love, couldst thou do anything better? … If this be thy life, thou shalt not deem it a misfortune to lack the things men most crave and toil for."

"It is a common error to imagine that to be stirring and voluble in a worthy cause is to be good and to do good."

"What we think out for ourselves forms channels in which other thoughts will flow."

"We are not masters of the truth which is borne in upon us: it overpowers us."

"A Wise man knows that much of what he says and does is commonplace and trivial. His thoughts are not all solemn and sacred in his own eyes. He is able to laugh at himself and is not offended when others make him a subject whereon to exercise their wit."

"It is the expensiveness of our pleasures that makes the world poor and keeps us poor in ourselves. If we could but learn to find enjoyment in the things of the mind, the economic problems would solve themselves."

"The value of a mind is measured by the nature of the objects it habitually contemplates. They whose thoughts are of trifles are trifling: they who dwell with what is eternally true, good and fair, are like unto God."

"The best money can procure for thee is freedom to live in thy true self. It is more apt however to enslave than to liberate. It is good also when thou makest it a means to help thy fellow men; but here too it is easier to harm than to benefit: for the money thou givest another is useful to him only when it stimulates him to self-activity."

"Wouldst thou bestow some precious gift upon thy fellows, make thyself a noble man."

"Agitators and declaimers may heat the blood, but they do not illumine the mind."

"If thy friends tire of thee, remember that it is human to tire of everything."

"If the young are watched too closely, if they are kept habitually under surveillance, the spring of action is weakened, the power of initiative is destroyed, and they become mediocre, commonplace, mechanical men and women, from whom nothing excellent or distinguished may be expected. Parents and teachers … must so deal with the young as to bring them little by little under the control of reason and conscience; and in this, nothing thwarts more surely than excessive supervision, for it draws attention from the inner view and voice to the eyes of the watchers. It may cultivate a love of decency and propriety, but not the creative feeling that we live with God and that righteousness is life."

"They who think they know all, learn nothing."

"As they are the bravest who require no witnesses to their deeds of daring, so they are the best who do right without thinking whether or not it shall be known."

"The more we live with what we imagine others think of us, the less we live with truth."

"A hobby is the result of a distorted view of things. It is putting a planet in the place of a sun."

"As children must have the hooping cough, the college youth must pass through the stage of conceit in which he holds in slight esteem the wisdom of the best."

"We do not see rightly until we learn to eliminate what we expect or wish to see from what we really see."

"Thought from which no emotion springs is sterile. The knowledge that has no bearing on the conduct of life is vain."

"It is the business of the teacher … to fortify reason and to make conscience sovereign."

"The study of science, dissociated from that of philosophy and literature, narrows the mind and weakens the power to love and follow the noblest ideals: for the truths which science ignores and must ignore are precisely those which have the deepest bearing on life and conduct."

"As the savages whom we have instructed are ready when left to themselves to return to their ancestral mode of life, so our young people quickly forget what they have learned at school, and sink back into the commonplace existence from which a right education would have saved them."

"They whom trifles distract and nothing occupies are but children."

"If we fail to interest, whether because we are dull and heavy, or because our hearers are so, we teach in vain."

"To cultivate the memory we should confide to it only what we understand and love: the rest is a useless burden; for simply to know by rote is not to know at all."

"We have no sympathy with those who are controlled by ideas and passions which we neither understand nor feel. Thus they who live to satisfy the appetites do not believe it possible to live in and for the soul."

"Exercise of body and exercise of mind are supplementary, and both may be made recreative and educative."

"We do not find it hard to bear with ourselves, though we are full of faults. Why then may we not learn to be tolerant of others?"

"Believe in no triumph which is won by the deadening of human faculty or the dwarfing of human life. Strive for truth and love, not for victory."

"A liberal education is that which aims to develop faculty without ulterior views of profession or other means of gaining a livelihood. It considers man an end in himself and not an instrument whereby something is to be wrought. Its ideal is human perfection."

"One may speak Latin and have but the mind of a peasant."

"Inferior thinking and writing will make a name for a man among inferior people, who in all ages and countries, are the majority."

"What a wise man knows seems so plain and simple to himself that he easily makes the mistake of thinking it to be so for others."

"In education, as in religion and love, compulsion thwarts the purpose for which it is employed."

"Where it is the chief aim to teach many things, little education is given or received."

"The aim of education is to strengthen and multiply the powers and activities of the mind rather than to increase its possessions."