Only when man feels himself responsible for the future can he have hope or despair, but when he thinks of himself as the passive victim of an extremely complex technological bureaucracy, his motivation falters and he starts drifting from one moment to the next, making life a long row of randomly chained incidents and accidents.
--- Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, 9

[Peter] himself did not know exactly what he was looking for, but he had a general, all-pervading feeling of confusion.
--- ibid, 12

For him the liberals and progressives are fooling themselves by tryingto make an intolerable situation more tolerable. He is tired of pruning trees; he wants to pull out the roots of a sick society.
--- ibid, 18