Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes

• Death is the supreme Festival on the road to freedom.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Topics in Uncategorized

• We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Topics in Uncategorized

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

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Topics in God

  Tags in Silence

• If religion is only a garment of Christianity—and even this garment has looked very different at different times—then what is religionless Christianity?

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Topics in Uncategorized

• The cross is God’s truth about us, and therefore it is the only power that can make us truthful. When we know the cross we are no longer afraid of the truth.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Topics in Uncategorized

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

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Topics in Uncategorized
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  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

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Receive, Give, Gratitude

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

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Topics in Inspirational

• To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. 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. But on the other hand, knowledge of an apparently trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depth of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significant in the factual is wisdom.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Topics in Knowledge, Wisdom

  Tags in Facts, Reality

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

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

  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.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

• One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

• 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.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

• It is the characteristic excellence of the strong man that he can bring momentous issues to the fore and make a decision about them. The weak are always forced to decide between alternatives they have not chosen themselves.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (26)

Birth:	4th February, 1906
Death:	9th April, 1945
Nationality:	German
Profession:	Theologian

About

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi, and founding member of the Confessing Church. His writings on Christianity's role in the secular world, in which he called for a "religionless Christianity", have become widely influential, and many have labelled his book The Cost of Discipleship a modern classic.

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