A collection of quotes by Dietrich Bonhoeffer on empathy, compassion, joy, music, mission, justice, Christianity, grace, life, gratitude, faith and sin.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor, expert of theology and one of the founders of the Confessing Church who is however best known for being a fierce anti-Nazi activist. He was a student of theology and was a believer in liberal values that put him directly at odds with the philosophies of the Nazi Party. He went on to earn a doctorate in theology from the University of Berlin. He lived in the United States for some time and worked in New York City, before returning to his native Germany. The stint in the United States further broadened his liberal worldview. Along with his theological work, he was a liberal thinker as well and his views have influenced a wide range of people across Europe. His book ‘The Cost of Discipleship’, written in 1937, is considered among the most important books of the time and is still regarded as a classic. However, his most important contribution during his lifetime was his vociferous opposition to Adolf Hitler and his policies, which eventually led to his arrest. He had also spent time in one of the infamous concentration camps but he was eventually tried and executed when he was found to have been involved in a plot to kill Hitler. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s writings, speeches, thoughts and work always focussed on ‘practicing what you preach’. Our collection of  Dietrich Bonhoeffer quotes has been excerpted from his writings, and speeches. Here are some thought-provoking thoughts and quotations by Dietrich Bonhoeffer on understanding, kindness, suffering, persecution and evangelism.
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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.
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.
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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Not hero worship, but intimacy with Christ.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Time is the most valuable thing that we have, because it is the most irrevocable.
We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.....We must not.....assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but allow it to be arranged by God.
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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
How would you expect to find community while you intentionally withdraw from it at some point? The disobedient cannot believe; only the obedient believe.
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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
So many people come to church with a genuine desire to hear what we have to say, yet they are always going back home with the uncomfortable feeling that we are making it too difficult for them to come to Jesus.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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
We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions.
No sacrifice which a lover would make for his beloved is too great for us to make for our enemy.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
If my sinfulness appears to me in any way smaller or less detestable in comparison with the sins of others, I am still not recognizing my sinfulness at all.
The early morning belongs to the Church of the risen Christ. At the break of light it remembers the morning on which death and sin lay prostrate in defeat and new life and salvation were given to mankind
Grace at a low cost, is in the last resort simply a new law, which brings neither help nor freedom.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Den größten Fehler, den man im Leben machen kann, ist, immer Angst zu haben, einen Fehler zu machen.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
One act of obedience is worth a hundred sermons.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Who can really be faithful in great things if he has not learned to be faithful in the things of daily life?
Political action means taking on responsibility. This cannot happen without power. Power is to serve responsibility.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Things do exist that are worth standing up for without compromise. To me it seems that peace and social justice are such things, as is Christ himself.
Any honours that come our way are only stolen from him to whom alone they really belong, the Lord who sent us.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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.
Sanctification means that the Christians have been judged already, and that they are being preserved until the coming of Christ and are ever advancing towards it.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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…
Neighbourliness is not a quality in other people, it is simply their claim on ourselves.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Love, in the sense of spontaneous, unreflective action, spells the death of the old man.
The worse the evil, the readier must the Christian be to suffer it; he must let the evil person fall into Jesus' hands.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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.
We are torn out of our own existence and set down in the midst of the holy history of God on earth. There God dealt with us, and there he still deals with us, our needs and our sins, in judgment and grace.
Jesus is the only significance. Beside Jesus nothing has any significance. He alone matters.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
There can be no real attachment to the given creation, no genuine responsibility in the world, unless we recognize the breach which already separates us from it.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Not until one person desires to keep his own bread for himself does hunger ensue.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Through our daily meals He is calling us to rejoice, to keep holiday in the midst of our working day.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
May God in his mercy lead us through these times; but above all, may he lead us to himself.
Perhaps you still think you ought to think out beforehand and know what you ought to do. To that there is only one answer. You can only know and think about it by actually doing it.
Suffering, then, is the badge of true discipleship. The disciple is not above his master. Following Christ means passio passiva, suffering because we have to suffer.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
My past life is abundantly full of God’s mercy, and, above all sin, stands the forgiving love of the Crucified.
There is a wrong way of staying in the world and a wrong way of fleeing from it. In both cases we are fashioning ourselves according to the world.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
In short, it is much easier to see a thing through from the point of view of abstract principle than from that of concrete responsibility.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
It is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to lie.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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.
The brother is a burden to the Christian, precisely because he is a Christian. For the pagan the other person never becomes a burden at all. He simply sidesteps every burden that others may impose upon him.
As Christians, we needn’t be at all ashamed of some impatience, longing, opposition to what is unnatural, and our full share of desire for freedom, earthly happiness, and opportunity for effective work.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The task is not to turn the world upside down but in a given place to do what, from the perspecive of reality, is necessary objectively and to really carry it out.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Advent creates people, new people.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
A false faith is capable of terrible and monstrous things.
How impossible, how utterly absurd it would be for the disciples--these disciples, such men as these!--to try and become the light of the world! No, they are already the light, and the call has made them so.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
[...]he who can speak out of the abundance of God's Word, the wealth of directions, admonitions, and consolations of the Scriptures, will be able through God's Word to drive out demons and help his brother.
Nevertheless, it is the free grace of the resurrected One that now also goes after the individual, overcomes the doubter, and creates in him the Easter faith.
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