Letters Papers From Prison

Unless we have the courage to fight for a revival of wholesome reserve between man and man, we shall perish in an anarchy of human values.

When we forget what is due to ourselves and to others, when the feeling for human quality and the power to exercise reserve cease to exist, chaos is at the door.

Weizsäcker’s book The World-View of Physics is still keeping me very busy. It has again brought home to me quite clearly 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 w

We are witnessing the levelling down of all ranks of society, and at the same time the birth of a new sense of nobility, which is binding together a circle of men from all former social classes.

One can protest against evil; it can be unmasked and, if need be, prevented by force. Evil always carries the seeds of its own destruction, as it makes people, at the least, uncomfortable. Against folly we have no defence. Neither protests nor force can touch it; reasoning is no use; facts that contradict personal prejudices can simply be disbeliev

A few more words about ‘religionlessness’. I expect you remember Bultmann’s essay on the ‘demythologizing’ of the New Testament?13 My view of it today would be, not that he went ‘too far’, as most people thought, but that he didn’t go far enough. It’s not only the ‘mythological’ concepts, such as miracle, ascension, and so on (which are not in prin

STATIONS ON THE ROAD TO FREEDOM

Trust will always be one of the greatest, rarest, and happiest blessings of our life in community, though it can emerge only on the dark background of a necessary mistrust.

We know that it is most reprehensible to sow and encourage mistrust, and that our duty is rather to foster and strengthen confidence wherever we can.