“now we have fathomed what our space-ship is--a tiny bubble in a glass of God.”

“Försök till räddning genom tankeflyktoch överglidningar från dröm till drömblev ofta vår metod.Med ena benet dränkt i känslosvalldet andra med sitt stöd i känslodödvi ofta stod.Jag frågade mig själv men glömde svara.Jag drömde mig ett liv men glömde vara.Jag reste alltet rumt men glömde fara -ty jag satt fånge här i Aniara.”

“Hur svårt att tro på livet efter detta.Hur rätt att önska livet efter detta.Det är att visa glädje vid att levaoch lust att till dess skönhet återvända.”

“But in that first flush of victory and happiness and relief, and God knows what other emotions were involved in this great moment, we were all very much one, and we were all in a state of euphoria, drunk with our happiness.”

“We underestimated human potential, both the strength of man's intellect and the weakness of his flesh, and therefore his receptivity to satanic inspiration -- but ultimately he is our creature, and so what we've really underestimated is our own creativity. What we made has turned out to be more than what we thought we had made. So ultimately in our failure there is a compliment to us: our creativity is greater than ourselves!”

“Looking back to [Christendom's] youth, we recall the emotional stirrings, the deep sense of Christian purpose, when a temple, say, challenged the existing social order... Where is our Christian duty, our Christian aim? We do not know, we cannot say. Yet our ignorance and silence are certainly not due to the fact that the welfare state has made Christian thinking out of date and irrelevant. The reason we have nothing to say to the contemporary situation is that we have not been thinking about the contemporary situation. We stopped thinking about these things long ago. We stopped thinking Christianly outside the scope of personal morals and personal spirituality. We got into the habit of stepping out of our Christian garments whenever we stepped mentally into the field of social and political life. Becuase the subject was social or political, we left all of our well-tried and well-grounded Christian concepts behind us, and adopted the vocabulary of secularism. We put aside all talk of vocation, or God's providence, or man's spiritual destiny, and instead chattered with the rest about productivity, assembly line psychology, and deployment of personnel.”

“And here, right at the start, one encounters a new difficulty. For the task of reestablishing the notion of God's authority is obstructed not only by the depreciation of authority itself, but also by a false, pre-established picture of God- found even within the church. Certainly, the church has preserved the concept of a loving God, a merciful God, a compassionate God. But have Christians generally themselves any vivid sense of God's power and dominion? Do we, when we worship God, or when we reflect on His nature, catch a clear echo of His resounding and indomitable majesty?... It cannot be denied that this is the God we are supposed to worship- not just a companionable God who is to be sidled up to and nestled against, but and awesome God before whom the worshipper prostrates himself, a wrathful God whose raised right arm can shake the universe.”