"Adults find pleasure in deceiving a child. They consider it necessary, but they also enjoy it. The children very quickly figure it out and then practice deception themselves"
"Thanking you once more, I want to wish you the best of luck for your future life and to conclude by saying to you: Dream your dreams and may they come true!"
"Instead of explaining the sober facts of mechanics and electricity, I want to say a few words about the debt which we owe to youth; and with your permission I shall consider you as representing here not only the academic youth of Sweden nor even of Europe but also of America"
"I am sure my fellow-scientists will agree with me if I say that whatever we were able to achieve in our later years had its origin in the experiences of our youth and in the hopes and wishes which were formed before and during our time as students"
"But these realities will make themselves felt soon enough and while I am certainly not asking you to close your eyes to the experiences of earlier generations, I want to advise you not to conform too soon and to resist the pressure of practical necessity"
"Beauty is as relative as light and dark. Thus, there exists no beautiful woman, none at all, because you are never certain that a still far more beautiful woman will not appear and completely shame the supposed beauty of the first"
"However, if the religions in essence merely repeat statements from the United Nations Human Rights Declaration, such a Declaration becomes superfluous; an ethic is more than rights"
"That means that every human being - without distinction of sex, age, race, skin color, language, religion, political view, or national or social origin - possesses an inalienable and untouchable dignity"
"And a third thing is the understanding of the Church as a community, a communion which is just a hierarchy but the people of God, whose servants are the priests and bishops"
"Everything vanishes around me, and works are born as if out of the void. Ripe, graphic fruits fall off. My hand has become the obedient instrument of a remote will"
"Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in there having it! The more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish us; and they must be preserved free of corruption from an early age"
"It is an absolutely unique success of the church community to have introduced such an epoch-making change, in just a few years, without having a serious division"
"After two world wars, the collapse of fascism, nazism, communism and colonialism and the end of the cold war, humanity has entered a new phase of its history"
"All historical experience demonstrates the following: Our earth cannot be changed unless in the not too distant future an alteration in the consciousness of individuals is achieved"
