Centuries hence, when current social and political problems may seem as remote as the problems of the Thirty Years' War are to us, our age may be remembered chiefly for one fact: It was the time when the inhabitants of the earth first made contact with the vast cosmos in which their small planet is embedded.
What we have found over the years in the marketplace is that derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn't be taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so.
One must keep one's character. Earn a character first if you can, and if you can't, then assume one. From the code of morals I have been following and revising and revising for 72 years I remember one detail. All my life I have been honest - comparatively honest. I could never use money I had not made honestly - I could only lend it.
After 15 years of work I have achieved, as a common German soldier and merely with my fanatical willpower, the unity of the German nation, and have freed it from the death sentence of Versailles.
My sister...was an interested and zealous invalid during sixty-five years, tried all the new diseases as fast as they came out, and always enjoyed the newest one more than any that went before; my brother had accumulated forty-two brands of Christianity before he was called away.
No, life has not disappointed me. On the contrary, I find it truer, more desirable and mysterious every year -- ever since the day when the great liberator came to me: the idea that life could be an experiment of the seeker for knowledge -- and not a duty, not a calamity, not trickery.
As we seek Christ, as we find Him, as we follow Him, we shall have the Christmas spirit, not for one fleeting day each year, but as a companion always.