Robert Spaemann

“God is no undifferentiated, self-satisfied unity, but rather an event, an eternal celebration of emergence from another and of loving unification of nonidenticals, a wedding.”

“The strictly public character of the Mass is concealed if it is lumped together with the other elements in the pseudo-public sphere of sensationalism.”

“[E]ach human being stands in the center of his world. But as person he comes out of this center and sees himself so to speak from the outside.”

“In the scientized praxis of life, education becomes a foreign body.”

“The identification of ‘brain death’ and the death of the human being can be maintained only if the personality of man is disconnected from being a human in the biological sense. . . . To do this by appealing to the doctrine of St. Thomas is absurd.”

“Guilt can be taken away from me. But shame is a feeling that no one can take away. It pertains to the fact that I was capable of doing what I did.”

"In forgiveness, I allow the other to distance himself from his nature, from the way he is. In the moment of forgiveness, the other ceases to be a liar, so to speak. But it takes permission from outside of himself."

"There is only one admissible criterion for human personhood: belonging biologically to the human family."

"The personality of man stands and falls with his capacity to grasp truth."