Sore-tried and disillusioned, humanity has no doubt lost its orientation, and would seem to have lost as well its faith and hope. It is hovering, unshepherded and visionless, on the brink of disaster. A sense of fatality seems to pervade it. An ever-deepening gloom is settling on its fortunes as it recedes further and further from the outer fringes of the darkest zone of its agitated life and penetrates its very heart.
- Shoghi Effendi (From a letter dated 11 March 1936; published in ‘The World Order of Bahá'u'lláh: Selected Letters’)
