Inspirational Quotes by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The more I begin to love the commandments of God in creation and word, the more present they will be for me in every hour.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer ,
from God Is In the Manger
“God does not exercise an alien domination of the world but a liberating lordship that sets creation free; God’s rule lets family, culture, government, and church fulfill their created purposes, both distinct from and related to one another, and without any usurped heteronomy of one over the other.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer ,
from Ethics
“To grasp the old faithfulness of God anew every morning, to be able—in the middle of life—to begin a new life with God daily, that is the gift that God gives with every new morning….”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer ,
from God Is In the Manger
“Christ did not, like an ethicist, love a theory about the good; he loved real people. Christ was not interested, like a philosopher, in what is “generally valid,” but in that which serves real concrete human beings. Christ was not concerned about whether “the maxim of an action” could become “a principle of universal law,”[101.] but whether my action now helps my neighbor to be a human being before God. God did not become an idea, a principle, a program, a universally valid belief, or a law;[102.] God became human.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer ,
from Ethics
“Whoever does not know the austere blessedness of waiting—that is, of hopefully doing without—will never experience the full blessing of fulfillment.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer ,
from God Is In the Manger
“The source of a Christian ethic is not the reality of one’s own self, not the reality of the world, nor is it the reality of norms and values. It is the reality of God that is revealed in Jesus Christ.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer ,
from Ethics
“Today is Remembrance sunday. Will you have a memorial service for B. Riemer? It would be nice, but difficult. Then comes Advent, with all its happy memories for us. It was you who really opened up to me the world of music-making that we have carried on during the weeks of Advent. Life in a prison cell may well be compared to Advent: one waits, hopes, and does this, that, or the other—things that are really of no consequence—the door is shut, and can only be opened from the outside.6 Letter from Bonhoeffer at Tegel prison to Eberhard Bethge, November 21, 1943”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer ,
from God Is In the Manger
“A shaking of heads, perhaps even an evil laugh, must go through our old, smart, experienced, self-assured world, when it hears the call of salvation of believing Christians: “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us.”5 Dietrich Bonhoeffer”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer ,
from God Is In the Manger
“Ratio became a working hypothesis, a heuristic principle, and thus led to the incomparable rise of technology. This was something fundamentally new in world history. From the Egyptian pyramids to the Greek temples, from the medieval cathedrals up to the eighteenth century, technology was a matter of handicraft. It served religion, royalty, culture, and people’s daily needs.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer ,
from Ethics
“Nationalism calls forth the countermovement of internationalism.[84] Both are revolutionary in the same way. Prussia set the state over against them both. It wanted to be neither national nor international. In this its thought was more Western than that of the revolution.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer ,
from Ethics
“The church is church only when it is there for others.”
“In particular, our church will have to confront the vices of hubris, the worship of power, envy, and illusionism[28] as the roots of all evil. It will have to speak of moderation, authenticity, trust, faithfulness, steadfastness, patience, discipline, humility, modesty, contentment.[”
“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 allegiance to God--the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God.”
“Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.”
“Whoever despises another human being will never be able to make anything of him. Nothing of what we despise in another is itself foreign to us.”
“Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world.”
“it’s harder for us to find what we are looking for and must do without, since we have come to expect more from friendship than most other people do. In this respect as well, it’s not so easy to make do with “substitutes.”
“Well, in spite of everything, or rather because of everything, that we are now going through, each in his own way, we shall still be the same as before, shan’t we? I hope you don’t think I am here turning out to be a ‘man of the inner line’;59 I was never in less danger of that, and I think the same applies to you. What a happy day it will be when we tell each other our experiences. But I sometimes get very angry at not being free yet!”
“If I should still be kept in this hole over Christmas, don’t worry about it. I’m not really anxious about it. One can keep Christmas as a Christian even in prison - more easily than family occasions, anyhow.”
“I’ve just come across this in the Imitation of Christ: Custodi diligenter cellam tuam, et custodiet te (‘Take good care of your cell, and it will take care of you’). – May God keep us in faith.”
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor and theologian. He was also a participant in the German Resistance movement against Nazism, a founding member of the Confessing Church. His involvement in plans by members of the Abwehr (the German Military Intelligence Office) to assassinate Adolf Hitler resulted in his arrest in April 1943 and his subsequent execution by hanging in April 1945, shortly before the war's end.
Overshadowed by his life and death, his theology and his view of Christianity's role in the secular world has nevertheless remained very influential.
He seems to have undergone something of a personal conversion from a theologian primarily attracted to the intellectual side of Christianity to a dedicated man of faith, resolved to carry out the teaching of Christ as he found it revealed in the Gospels.