Dietrich Bonhoeffer quotes

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian and pastor known for his resistance to the Nazi regime. His writings on Christianity’s role in the modern world and his involvement in anti-Nazi activities have had a lasting impact. He became a symbol of moral courage and faith in the face of oppression. Here are 175 of his quotes:

Man seeks, in his manhood, not orders, not laws and peremptory dogmas, but counsel from one who is earnest in goodness and faithful in friendship, making man free.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Time is the most precious gift in our possession, for it is the most irrevocable. This is what makes it so disturbing to look back upon the time which we have lost. Time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering. Time lost is time not filled, time left empty.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that men should defeat their enemies by loving them.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all he has. It is the pearl of great price to by which the merchant will sell all his goods.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

By his willingly renouncing self-defence, the Christian affirms his absolute adherence to Jesus, and his freedom from the tyranny of his own ego. The exclusiveness of this adherence is the only power which can overcome evil.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another, except that the more bitter our enemy's hatred, the greater his need of love. Be his enmity political or religious, he has nothing to expect from a follower of Jesus but unqualified love. In such love there is not inner discord between the private person and official capacity. In both we are disciples of Christ, or we are not Christians at all.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Jesus' call to bear the cross places all who follow him in the community of the forgiveness of sins. Forgiving sins is the Christ-suffering required of his disciples. It is required of all Christians.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

If any want to become my followers," Jesus says. Following him is not something that is self-evident, even among the disciples. No one can be forced, no one can be expected to follow him. ... "If any want to follow me, they must deny themselves ... and take up their cross.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Jesus' commandment never wishes to destroy life, but rather to preserve, strengthen, and heal life.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Jesus Christ has to suffer and be rejected... Suffering and being rejected are not the same.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Ultimate seriousness in not without a dose of humor.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Beside the staff of life, taken and fashioned from the heavy earth, beside our marriage, work, and war the free man, too, will live and grow towards the sun. Not the ripe fruit alone - blossom is lovely, too. Does blossom only serve the fruit, or does fruit only serve the blossom - who knows? But both are given to us.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The outcome of the Reformation was the victory, not of Luther's perception of grace in all its purity and costliness, but of the vigilant religious instinct of man for the place where grace is to be obtained at the cheapest price.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Being a Christan is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Not from the heavy soil where blood and sex and oath rule in their hallowed might, where the earth itself, guarding the primal consecrated order, avenges wantonness and madness - not from the heavy soil of the earth, but from the spirit's choice and free desire, needing no oath of legal bond, is friend bestowed on friend.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Should the church be trying to erect a spiritual reign of terror over people by threatening earthly and eternal punishment on its own authority and commanding everything a person must believe and do to be saved? Should the church's word bring new tyranny and violent abuse to human souls? It may be that some people yearn for such servitude. But could the church ever serve such a longing? When holy scripture speaks of following Jesus, it proclaims that people are free from all human rules, from everything which presumes, burdens, or causes worry and torment of conscience. In following Jesus, people are released from the hard yoke of their own laws to be under the gentle yoke of Jesus Christ. ... Jesus' commandment never wishes to destroy life, but rather to preserve, strengthen, and heal life.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Jesus is no draughtsman of political blueprints, he is the one who vanquished evil through suffering. It looked as though evil had triumphed on the cross, but the real victory belonged to Jesus. And the cross is the only justification for the precept of non-violence, for it alone can kindle a faith in the victory over evil which will enable men to obey that precept. And only such obedience is blessed with the promise that we shall be partakers of Christ's victory as well as his sufferings.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The person who's in love with their vision of community will destroy community. But the person who loves the people around them will create community everywhere they go.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer