Quotes by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.

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.

Christian marriage is marked by discipline and self-denial. Christianity does not therefore depreciate marriage, it sanctifies it.

God does not give us everything we want, but He does fulfill His promises, leading us along the best and straightest paths to Himself.

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

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

The fact that we do not speak it but sing it only expresses the fact that our spoken words are inadequate to express what we want to say, that the burden of our song goes far beyond all human words.

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

The test of morality of a society is what it does with it's children.

As long as we let the Word of God be our only armor, we can look confidently into the future.

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.

The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving.

The heart clings to collected treasure. Stored-up possessions get between me and God. Where my treasure is, there is my trust, my security, my comfort, my God. Treasure means idolatry.

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.

Wherever it pleases God to put man in this world, the Christian must be ready for martyrdom and death. It is only in this way that man learns faith.

The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential.

Unless he obeys, a man cannot believe.

How would you expect to find community while you intentionally withdraw from it at some point? The disobedient cannot believe; only the obedient believe.

We should find God in what we do know, not in what we don't; not in outstanding problems, but in those we have already solved.

The preaching of grace can only be protected by the preaching of repentance.

To be sure, God shall call you, and us, only at the hour that God has chosen. Until that hour, which lies in God's hand alone, we shall be protected even in the greatest danger; and from our gratitude for such protection ever new readiness surely arises for the final call.

God wants to see human beings, not ghosts who shun the world... Our marriage must be a 'yes' to God's earth. It must strengthen our resolve to do and accomplish something on earth. I fear that Christians who venture to stand on earth on only one leg will stand in heaven on only one leg too.

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.

So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self- satisfied; in fact, he can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make him aggressive. A fool must therefore be treated more cautiously than a scoundrel.

In recent years we have seen a great deal of bravery and self-sacrifice, but civil courage hardly anywhere, even among ourselves.

Music... will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.

It seems to me more important actually to share someones distress than to use smooth words about it.

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.

Ultimate seriousness in not without a dose of humor.

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

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

Who can really be faithful in great things if he has not learned to be faithful in the things of daily life?

They wander on earth and live in heaven, and although they are weak, they protect the world; they taste of peace in the midst of turmoil; they are poor, and yet they have all they want. They stand in suffering and remain in joy, they appear dead to all outward sense and lead a life of faith within.

Before Jesus leads His disciples into suffering, humiliation, disgrace, and disdain, He summons them and shows Himself to them as the Lord in God's glory.

It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.

He who loves community destroys community; he who loves the brethren builds community.

Destruction of the embryo in the mother's womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life.

Consecutive reading of biblical books forces everyone who wants to hear to put himself, or to allow himself to be found, where God has acted once and for all for the salvation of men.

As Christ bore and received us as sinners so we in his fellowship may bear and receive sinners into the fellowship of Christ through the forgiving of sins.

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 Christianity community.

It is the fellowship of the Cross to experience the burden of the other. If one does not experience it, the fellowship he belongs to is not Christian. If any member refuses to bear that burden, he denies the law of Christ.

To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom.

If religion is onlya garment of Christianityand even this garment has looked very different at different timesthen what is religionless Christianity?

In the gospels the very first step a man must take is an act which radically affects his whole existence.

And after death something new begins, over which all the powers of the world of death can have no more control.

The church ... is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to put a spoke in the wheel itself.

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.

The church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community.

Every Christian community must realize that not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak. The elimination of the weak is the death of fellowship.

Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this.

Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian conception of God.

The word of cheap grace has been the ruin of more Christians than any commandment of works.

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.

The child asks of the Father whom he knows. Thus, the essence of Christian prayer is not general adoration, but definite, concrete petition. The right way to approach God is to stretch out our hands and ask of One who we know has the heart of a Father.

That it is Peter, the rock of the church, who incurs guilt here immediately after his own confession to Jesus Christ and after his appointment by Jesus, means that from its very inception the church itself has taken offense at the suffering Christ.

Self-denial means knowing only Christ, and no longer oneself. It means seeing only Christ, who goes ahead of us, and no longer the path that is too difficult for us....
Self-denial is saying only: He goes ahead of us, hold fast to him.

How shall we ever help a Christian brother and set him straight in his difficulty and doubt, if not with God's own Word? All our own words quickly fail.

The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing.

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.

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace.

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

Salvation is free, but discipleship will cost you your life.

Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even though their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.

The sermon has been reduced to parenthetical church remarks about newspaper events.

God has reserved to Himself the right to determine the end of life, because He alone knows the goal to which it is His will to lead it. It is for Him alone to justify a life or to cast it away.

Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.

The gift of Christ is not the Christian religion, but the grace and love of God which culminate in the cross.

The Psalter is the great school of prayer.

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

If you believe, take the first step, it leads to Jesus Christ. If you don't believe, take the first step all the same, for you are bidden to take it.

A day without morning and evening prayers and personal intercessions is actually a day without meaning or importance.

A Christian fellowship lives and exists by the intercession of its members for one another, or it collapses.

While it is good that we seek to know the Holy One, it is probably not so good to presume that we ever complete the task.

Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is the more attractive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation.

Nothing can be more cruel than the leniency which abandons others to their sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one's community back from the path of sin.

I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me.

Just as our love for God begins with listening to God's Word, the beginning of love for other Christians is learning to listen to them.

The wars of Israel were the only 'holy wars' in history... there can be no more wars of faith. The only way to overcome our enemy is by loving him.

If the heart is devoted to the mirage of the world, to the creature instead of the Creator, the disciple is lost... However urgently Jesus may call us, His call fails to find access to our hearts... for they have already been given to another.

What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straghtforward men.

From now on there can be no more wars of faith. The only way to overcome our enemy is by loving him.

The limitation of the ethical phenomenon to its place and time does not imply its rejection but, on the contrary, its validation. One does not use canons to shoot sparrows.

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.

Not everyone can wait: neither the sated nor the satisfied nor those without respect can wait. The only ones who can wait are people who carry restlessness around with them.

The renewal of the Church will come from a new type of monasticism which only has in common with the old an uncompromising allegiance to the Sermon on the Mount. It is high time people banded together to do this.

Earthly possessions dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. Yet all the time they are the very source of anxiety.

If my sinfulness appears to me to be in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all. ... How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own?

It is not that God is the spectator and sharer of our present life, howsoever important that is; but rather that we are the reverent listeners and participants in God's action in the sacred story, the history of the Christ on earth.

A home is a kingdom of it's own in the midst of the world, a stronghold amid life's storms and stresses, a refuge, even a sanctuary.

Time lost is time not filled, time left empty.

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

The deceit, the lie of the Devil consists of this, that he wishes to
make man believe that he can live without God's Word.

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.

It is the task of youth not to reshape the church, but rather to listen to the word of God.

The responsible person seeks to make his whole life a response to the question and call of God.

One's task is not to turn the world upside down, but to do what is necessary at the given place and with a due consideration of reality.

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.

Every word of Holy Scripture was a love letter from God directed very personally to us and he asked us whether we loved Jesus.

The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer.

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

There remains an experience of incomparable value.

God does not love some ideal person, but rather human beings just as we are, not some ideal world, but rather the real world.

A father acts on behalf of his children by working, providing, intervening, struggling, and suffering for them. In so doing, he really stands in their place. He is not an isolated individual, but incorporates the selves of several people in his own self.

The exclusion of the weak and insignificant, the seemingly useless people, from a Christian community may actually mean the exclusion of Christ; in the poor brother Christ is knocking at the door.

The Incarnation is the ultimate reason why the service of God cannot be divorced from the service of man.

Joy draws its nourishment from quietness and from the unfathomable.

You can only learn what obedience is by obeying.

Telling the truth ... is not solely a matter of moral character; it is also a matter of correct appreciation of real situations and of serious reflection upon them.

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

Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the community must enter every day.

Thinking in terms of two realms understands the paired concepts worldy-Christia n, natural-superna tural, profane-sacred, rational-revela tions, as ultimate static opposites...and fails to recognize the original unity of these opposites in the Christ-reality.

The more deeply we grow into the psalms and the more often we pray them as our own, the more simple and rich will our prayer become.

Gratitude transforms the torment of memory of good things now gone into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain.

Advent creates people, new people.

A love that left people alone in their guilt would not have real people as its object. So, in vicarious responsibility for people, and in His love for real human beings, Jesus becomes the one burdened by guilt.

And we simply cannot be constant with the fact that God's cause is not always the successful one, that we really could be unsuccessful; and yet be on the right road. But this is where we find out whether we have begun in faith or in a burst of enthusiasm.

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

After he has been following Christ for a long time, the disciple of Jesus will be asked, Lacked ye anything? and he will answer Nothing, Lord. How could he when he knows that despite hunger and nakedness, persecution and danger, the Lord is always at his side?

God comes into the very midst of evil and of death, and judges the evil in us and in the world. And by judging us, he cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with his grace and love. He makes us happy as only children can be happy.

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.

To deny oneself is to be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only Him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us. Once more, all that self-denial can say is, 'He leads the way, keep close to Him.'

It is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to lie.... There is a truth which is of Satan. Its essence is that under the semblance of truth it denies everything that is real. It lives upon hatred of the real world which is created and loved by God.

If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can't, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.

So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work.

There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.

The restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising discipleship, following Christ according to the sermon on the mount.  I believe the time has come to gather people together to do this.

I believe that God both wills and is able to bring good out of everything, even the worst... I believe that even our mistakes and wrongdoing are not fruitless.

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.

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.

It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.

Blessed are those who are alone in the strength of the community. Blessed are those who preserve community in the strength of solitude. But the strength of solitude and the strength of community is the strength of the Word of God alone, which is meant for the individual in the community.

The entire day receives order and discipline when it acquires unity. This unity must be sought and found in morning prayer. The morning prayer determines the day.

It matters little what form of prayer we adopt or how many words we use. What matters is the faith which lays hold on God, knowing that He knows our needs before we even ask Him. That is what gives Christian prayer its boundless confidence and its joyous certainty.

While we exert ourselves to grow beyond our humanity, to leave the human behind us, God becomes human; and we must recognize that God wills that we be human, real human beings. While we distinguish between pious and godless, good and evil, noble and base, God loves real people without distinction.

Silence in the face of evil is evil itself.

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 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.

The Christian must treat his enemy as a brother, and requite his hostility with love. His behavior must be determined not by the way others treat him, but by the treatment he himself receives from Jesus; it has only one source, and that is the will of Jesus.

The deep meaning of the cross of Christ is that there is no suffering on earth that is not borne by God.

The Church is her true self only when she exists for humanity. As a fresh start, she should give away all her endowments to the poor and needy. The clergy should live solely on the freewill offerings of their congregations, or possibly engage in some secular calling.

The Church is the Church only when it exists for others...not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men of every calling what it means to live for Christ, to exist for others.

The way to misuse our possessions is to use them as an insurance against the morrow. Anxiety is always directed to the morrow, whereas goods are in the strictest sense meant to be used only for to-day.

Each morning is a new beginning of our life. Each day is a finished whole. The present day marks the boundary of our cares and concerns. It is long enough to find God or lose Him, to keep faith or fall into disgrace.

Good Friday and Easter free us to think about other things far beyond our own personal fate, about the ultimate meaning of all life, suffering, and events; and we lay hold of a great hope.

We have learnt, rather too late, that action comes, not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.

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

In other times it may have been the business of Christianity to champion the equality of all men; its business today will be to defend passionately human dignity and reserve.

The disciple simply burns his boats and goes ahead. He is called out... The old life is left behind, and completely surrendered. The disciple is dragged out of his relative security into a life of absolute insecurity... out of the realm of the finite...into the realm of infinite possibilities.

Time is lost when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering.

Faith without works is not faith at all, but a simple lack of obedience to God.

When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.

Wherever there are sinners, the weak, the sorrowful, the poor in the world, that is where God goes.

Any honours that come our way are only stolen from him to whom alone they really belong, the Lord who sent us.

Anything I cannot thank God for for the sake of Christ, I may not thank God for at all; to do so would be sin. ... We cannot rightly acknowledge the gifts of God unless we acknowledge the Mediator for whose sake alone they are given to us.

To endure the cross is not tragedy; it is the suffering which is the fruit of an exclusive allegiance to Jesus Christ.

God's truth judges created things out of love, and Satan's truth judges them out of envy and hatred.

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

One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.

The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.

It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can bring out the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them. The weak always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own.

It is very easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements in comparison with what we owe others.

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