Quotes by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

About Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident, and key founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world have become widely influential, and his book The Cost of Discipleship became a modern classic.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Judgement is the forbidden objectivization of the other person which destroys single-minded love. I am not forbidden to have my own thoughts about the other person, to realize his shortcomings, but only to the extent that it offers to me an occasion ...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Gideon conquers, the church conquers, we conquer, because faith conquers. But the victory belongs not to Gideon, the church, or ourselves, but to God. And God's victory means our defeat, our humiliation; it means God's derision and wrath at all human...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive al...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

If you board the wrong train it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Where a people prays, there is the hurch; and where the church is; there is never loneliness.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Freedom for the Church comes from the necessity of the Word of God. Otherwise, it becomes arbitrariness and ends in a great many new ties.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Every cult of personality that emphasizes the distinguished qualities, virtues, and talents of another person, even though these be of an altogether spiritual nature, is worldly and has no place in the Christian community; indeed, it poisons the Chri...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to each of us.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Nothing that we despise in other men is inherently absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don't do, and more in light of what they suffer.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Desires to which we cling closely can easily prevent us from being what we ought to be and can be; and on the other hand, desires repeatedly mastered for the sake of present duty make us richer.Lack of desire is poverty.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

After death something new begins, over which all powers of the world of death have no more might.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I always have the feeling we are merely fearfully trying to save room for God; I would rather speak of God at the center than at the limits, in strength rather than weakness, and thus in human life and goodness rather than in death and guilt.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Silence in the face of evil is evil itself: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It is only when one knows the unutterability of the name of God that one can utter the name of Jesus Christ; it is only when one loves life and the earth so much that without them everything seems to be over that one may believe in the resurrection a...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

My past life is abundantly full of God’s mercy, and, above all sin, stands the forgiving love of the Crucified.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Not in the flight of ideas, but only in action is freedom. Make up your mind and come out into the tempest of the living.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God is never in the world in any way except in his absolute transcendence of it.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

[Paul] has no intention to instruct the Christian community about the task and responsibility of government. His entire concern is with the responsibility of the Christian community towards the State.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The only man who has the right to say that he is justified by grace alone is the man who has left all to follow Christ.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Author Bio

  • NameDietrich Bonhoeffer
  • DescriptionGerman Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi
  • BornFebruary 4, 1906
  • DiedApril 9, 1945
  • CountryGermany
  • ProfessionTheologian; Philosopher
  • AwardsRighteous Among The Nations; Civil Courage Prize