German theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged by the Nazis on April 9 1945 for his part in a conspiracy to overthrow Hitler. In a reckoning written in 1943 he wrote: “We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms;
Conversation
...we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses or cynics
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...or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remoreseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?