Top 500 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes (2023 Update)
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101. “Christians have forgotten that the ministry of listening has been committed to them by Him who is Himself the great listener and whose work they should share. We should listen with the ears of God that we may speak the Word of God.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

102. “What is the “extraordinary”? It is the love of Jesus Christ himself, love that goes to the cross in suffering obedience.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

103. “Fulfilled life is possible in spite of unfulfilled wishes.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

105. “The Lord stands above the new day, for God has made it. All restlessness, all worry, and anxiety flee before him.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

107. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

108. “It is only because he became like us that we can become like him.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

110. “Love asks nothing in return, but seeks those who need it. And who needs our love more than those who are consumed with hatred and are utterly devoid of love.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

111. “2 Corinthians 5:20: So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

114. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

115. “Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

117. “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

118. “In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

119. “The beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

120. “Joy draws its nourishment from quietness and from the unfathomable.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

121. “Only in Jesus are we able to pray, and with Him we also know that we shall be heard.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

122. “Only those who put tomorrow completely into God’s hand and receive fully today what they need for their lives are really secure.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

123. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

124. “Sometimes we just need a firm kick in the pants. An unsmiling expectation that if we mean all these wonderful things we talk about and sing about, then let’s see something to prove it.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

125. “Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

126. “The Advent season is a season of waiting, but our whole life is an Advent season, that is, a season of waiting for the last Advent, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

127. “Possessions are not God’s blessing and goodness, but the opportunities of service which he entrusts to us.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

128. “The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and His work become the one and only thing that is vital between us.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

129. “Where a people prays, there is the church; and where the church is; there is never loneliness.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

130. “As long as there are people, Christ will walk the earth as your neighbor, as the one through whom God calls you, speaks to you, makes demands on you. That is the great seriousness and great blessedness of the Advent message. Christ is standing at the door; he lives in the form of a human being among us.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

131. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

132. “The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that men should defeat their enemies by loving them.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

134. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

135. “I believe that nothing that happens to me is meaningless and that it is good for us all that it should be so, even if it runs counter to our own wishes. As I see it, I’m here for some purpose, and I only hope I may fulfill it.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

136. “Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

137. “The Church knows nothing of a sacredness of war. The Church which prays’Our Father’asks God only for peace.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

138. “When people are deeply affected by the Word, they tell it to other people.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

139. “Political action means taking on responsibility. This cannot happen without power. Power is to serve responsibility.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

141. “When we come to a clearer and more sober estimate of our own limitations and responsibilities, that makes it possible more genuinely to love our neighbor.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

142. “Christian community is not an ideal we have to realize, but rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our community is in Jesus Christ alone, the more calmly we will learn to think about our community and pray and hope for it.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

143. “Easter is not about immortality but about resurrection from a death that is a real death with all its frightfulness and horrors, resurrection from a death of the body and the soul, of the whole person, resurrection by the power of God’s mighty act. This is the Easter message.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

144. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

145. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

147. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

148. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

149. “Then fear will grow pale and fade away, and you will be free, through your faith in our strong and living Savior, Jesus Christ.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

150. “Thus the call to follow Christ always means a call to share the work of forgiving men their sins. Forgiveness is the Christlike suffering which it is the Christian’s duty to bear.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer