“The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world. In other words, I can only recommend perspective and distance.”

“The kind of hope that I often think about…I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world.Either we have hope within us, or we don’t. It is a dimension of the soulIt’s not essentially dependent upon some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation.Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

“The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought.”

“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

“Anyone who takes himself too seriously always runs the risk of looking ridiculous; anyone who can consistently laugh at himself does not. ”

“There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause.”

“I feel that the dormant goodwill in people needs to be stirred. People need to hear that it makes sense to behave decently or to help others, to place common interests above their own, to respect the elementary rules of human coexistence.”