“I attacked those Western playwrights who use their influence and affluence to preach to the world the nihilistic doctrine that life is pointless and irrationally destructive, and that there is nothing we can do about it. Until everyone is fed, clothed, housed and taught, until human beings have equal leisure to contemplate the overwhelming fact of mortality, we should not (I argued) indulge in the luxury of "privileged despair."”

“Oh, we are but soft and squishy bags of mortality rolling in a bin of sharp circumstance, leaking life until we collapse, flaccid, into our own despair..”

“We preach the Golden Rule with an enthusiasm that is well-nigh vehement, and then freckle the globe with huge murder-houses for the expeditious destruction of those who have as good a right to live as we have.”

“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”

“Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.”

“I am not a criminal. I have nothing to be ashamed of. We are workers, mothers, human beings. We should be able to be proud of who we are.”

“I have argued that a religion or a philosophy cannot speak about facts of the world – if it does, it is now or will eventually be wrong – but it can and should speak about the relevance and ranking of facts and observations.”

“Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.”

“We will never be cleansed until we confess we are dirty. And we will never be able to wash the feet of those who have hurt us until we allow Jesus, the one we have hurt, to wash ours.”

“If they [the Germans] attack, we will defend. If they do not attack until winter comes, then we will and will tear them to shreds!”