Adolescents need freedom to choose, but not so much freedom that they cannot, in fact, make a choice. - Erik Erikson

modern times, of course, political ideologies have taken over the numinous function, with the face of the leader multiplied on a thousand banners.

And yet the sternness sometimes displayed in your letters to your children bespeaks an appalling sense of doom, as if they, as the product of your sin, had no chance for salvation except as partners in your renunciation.

The search of youth is not for all-permissibility, but rather for new ways of directly facing up to what truly counts.