Whenever there was a dilemma, I just left it in abeyance and—without really consciously dealing with it intensively—let it grow toward the clarity of a decision. But this clarity is not so much intellectual as it is instinctive. The decision is made; whether one can adequately justify it retrospectively is another question. "Thus" it happened that I went. Bonhoeffer was always thinking about thinking.

At some point every person must hear from God, must know what God was calling him to do, apart from others.

Thinking about the deep call of Christ, which was not about winning, but about submission to God, wherever that might lead.

But after all, it is a very pretty pass indeed. And how very glad we are that one man led us to that pretty pass, to that golden doorway, and then guided us through the mountains to a world we hadn't known could exist.

I believe our situation in present-day America is grave, but this book is not meant to be discouraging. In fact, by way of encouragement before we consider what we have forgotten and what we must do, let's first acknowledge that despite our difficulties and considerable failings, much of America's promise has already been fulfilled, and spectacularly so, far beyond what anyone might have imagined.

Even if you were to knock my head off, God would still exist.

Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot imagine a scientist without that profound faith.

That too seems unnecessarily severe, but we mustn't judge too harshly, for those who have gone through anything like a dramatic conversion usually stagger a bit too far in one direction before they correct their course and learn where the best forward path lies.

Some wondered whether he was just kicking against the goads, but when someone asked Bonhoeffer whether he shouldn't join the German Christians in order to work against them from within, he answered that he couldn't. 'If you board the wrong train,' he said, 'it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.

This was one of the casualties of war, that trust itself seemed to die a thousand deaths.

Eventually, each individual will not only own their data, but it will be secured in a personal cloud or system, with the owner granting rights for others to access. Now that's a flip.

The staff of such a monitoring center could represent the future "hospitalist"—not likely to be called a "home-ist"—a physician particularly trained and adept at the interface of machines and people. You might describe them as geeks with compassion, not necessarily an oxymoron.