“That is the Roman way: to give favors to the favorites.”

In the event that my illness worsens, I want to have a guarantee that I can die in a dignified manner. Nowhere in the bible does it say that a person has to stick it out to the decreed end. No one tells us what “decreed” means.

If priests were allowed to marry, if this would be an optional thing, and if he could have wife and children, he would certainly have less temptation to satisfy certain sexual impulses with minors.

But I have to add – and this answers your other question – this catholicity in time and in space is only meaningful for me if there is, at the same time, a concentration on the Gospel.

I am firmly convinced that there is life after death, not in a primitive sense but as the entry of my completely finite person into God’s infinity, as a transition into another reality beyond the dimension of space and time that pure reason can neither affirm nor deny.

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.

Alluding to hell is a warning that a person can completely neglect his purpose in life. I don’t believe in an eternal hell.

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.

A Church which abandons the truth abandons itself.

Everyone agrees the celibacy rule is just a Church law dating from the 11th century, not a divine command.

There will be peace on earth when there is peace among the world religions.

As a matter of fact, you have deficiencies in all religions, but you have truth in all religions.

There will be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions. There will be no peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions.

It is not certain that everything is certain, neither is it certain that everything is uncertain.

God’s love does not protect us from suffering. God’s love protects us in the midst of suffering.

I’m not saying goodbye to life because I’m a misanthropist or disdain this life, but because, for other reasons, it’s time to move on.

Religion often is misused for purely power-political goals, including war.

Love sometimes wants to do us a great favor: hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.

But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.

Fortune and love favor the brave.

For every idealistic peacemaker willing to renounce his self-defense in favor of a weapons-free world, there is at least one warmaker anxious to exploit the other’s good intentions.

When you start loving yourself, you realize that life is so much in your favor. 

Smile even when it seems like things aren’t going in your favor.  

When woman has a newspaper which fear and favor cannot touch, then it will be that she can freely write her own thoughts.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.