“We know now that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he canplay Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in themorning.”

“Wolfgang von Goethe:"A man can stand anything, except a succession of ordinary days.”

“Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.”

“Even the wisest man grows tense/with some sort of violence/before he can accomplish fate,/know his work or choose his mate.”

“A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.”

“Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips.”