Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes

The future and the hope for the middle class church lies in the renewal of its lifeblood, which is only possible if the church succeeds in winning the working class.

Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death.

Certainly one must try everything, but only to become more certain what God's way is.

Principles are only tools in the hands of God; they will soon be thrown away when they are no longer useful.

God honors some with great suffering and grants them the grace of martyrdom, while other are not tempted beyond their strength. But in every case it is one cross.

When we come to a clearer and more sober estimate of our own limitations and responsibilities, that makes it possible more genuinely to love our neighbor.

In Jesus Christ we have been chosen from eternity, accepted in time, and united for eternity.

Whenever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure is lost to the Christian church. With its recovery will come unexpected power.

The Lord stands above the new day, for God has made it. All restlessness, all worry, and anxiety flee before him.

What is happiness and unhappiness? It depends so little on the circumstances; it depends really only on what happens inside a person. I am grateful for every day and that makes me happy.

In the New Testament our enemies are those who harbor hostility against us, not those against whom we cherish hostility, for Jesus refuses to reckon with such a possibility.

We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know.

The Church knows nothing of a sacredness of war. The Church which prays'Our Father'asks God only for peace.

... there are not two realities, but only one reality, and that is the reality of God, which has become manifest in the Christ event/redemption and creation.

Man has learned to cope with all questions of importance without recourse to God as a working hypothesis.

Monastic life thus became a living protest against the secularization of Christianity, against the cheapening of grace.

There remains an experience of incomparable value.

The cross is God's truth about us, and therefore it is the only power thatcanmakeustruthful.Whenwe know the cross we are no longer afraid of the truth.

The world upon whom grace is thrust as a bargain will grow tired of it.

Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.

Principles are only tools in the hands of God they will soon be thrown away when they are no longer useful.

Being free means "being free for the other, " because the other has bound me to him. Only in relationship with the other am I free

Every wedding must be an occasion of joy that human beings can do such great things, that they have been given such immense freedom and power to take the helm in their life’s journey…

If we would answer the question of the existence of the Evil then we would not be sinners, we could make something else responsible.

Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.

Through the medium of prayer we go to our enemy, stand by his side, and plead for him to God.

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

We should never argue with the devil about our sins, but we should speak about our sins only with Jesus.

The truth of the matter is that the whole world has already been turned upside down by the work of Jesus Christ

We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.

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.

The author likens crisis, and particularly war, to stop motion photography in its capacity to make changes plain that are ordinarily too gradual to be seen.

We have to learn that personal suffering is a more effective key, a more rewarding principle for exploring the world in thought and action than personal good fortune.

Suffering, then, is the badge of true discipleship. The disciple is not above his master. Following Christ means passio passiva, suffering because we have to suffer.

By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.

Cheap grace is the mortal enemy of the church

It is a costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.

The task is not to turn the world upside down but in a given place to do what, from the perspecive of reality, is necessary objectively and to really carry it out.

If my sinfulness appears to me in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all.

May we be enabled to say "No" to sin and "Yes" to the sinner.

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.

Earthly goods deceive the human heart into believing that they give it security and freedom from worry. But in truth, they are what cause anxiety.

God loves his work and therefore wills to preserve it. Creation and preservation are two aspects of the one activity of God.

The temple of God is the holy people in Jesus Christ. The Body of Christ is the living temple of God and of the new humanity.

Justification is the new creation of the new man, and sanctification his preservation until the day of Jesus Christ.

It is a wicked sophistry to justify the worldliness of the Church by the cross of Christ.

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

The figure of the crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.

[Christ] is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality.

A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes - and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent