Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

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.

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.

The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists of listening to them.

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

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

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.

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.

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

A god who let us prove his existence would be an idol.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating.

Ultimate seriousness in not without a dose of humor.

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

The pursuit of purity is not about the suppression of lust, but about the reorientation of one's life to a larger goal.

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

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.

Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy.

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

One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.

If you do a good job for others, you heal yourself at the same time, because a dose of joy is a spiritual cure.

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

A pastor should never complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men.

Human love has little regard for the truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person.

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

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.

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

A righteous person is one who lives for the next generation.

A pastor who does not pray daily for his congregation is not a pastor.

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

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

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.

Politics are not the task of a Christian.

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

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