Top 500 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Only in Jesus Christ are we one, only through him are we bound together.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

152. “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

153. “The Christian needs another Christian who speaks God’s word to him. He needs him again and again when he becomes uncertain and discouraged, for by himself he cannot help himself without belying the truth.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

154. “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

155. “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

156. “The root of all sin is pride, superbia. I want to be my own law, I have a right to my self, my hatred and my desires, my life and my death. The.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

157. “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

158. “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

159. “The joy of God has gone through the poverty of the manger and the distress of the cross; therefore it is invincible and irrefutable.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

161. “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

162. “A community of Jesus which seeks to hide itself has ceased to follow him.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

163. “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

164. “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

165. “If we start with such ideas as God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence, we will never arrive at a true knowledge of God. However, if we participate by faith in Jesus Christ as the one who “is there for others,” we are liberated from self and experience the transcendence that is truly the God of the Bible.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

166. “I need the Christ that is in you, and you need the Christ that is in me.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

167. “In recent years we have seen a great deal of bravery and self-sacrifice, but civil courage hardly anywhere, even among ourselves.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

168. “Good works then are ordained for the sake of salvation, but they are in the end those which God himself works within us. They are his gift, but it is our task to walk in them at every moment of our lives, knowing all the time that any good works of our own could never help us to abide before the judgement of God. We cling in faith to Christ and his works alone.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

169. “The Scriptures speak of three kinds of community at the table that Jesus keeps with his own: the daily breaking of bread together at meals, the breaking of bread together at the Lord’s Supper, and the final breaking of bread together in the reign of God.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

170. “When all is said and done, the life of faith is nothing if not an unending struggle of the spirit with every available weapon against the flesh.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

171. “As long as we let the Word of God be our only armor, we can look confidently into the future.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

172. “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

173. “By his willingly renouncing self-defence, the Christian affirms his absolute adherence to Jesus, and his freedom from the tyranny of his own ego. The exclusiveness of this adherence is the only power which can overcome evil.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

174. “One’s task is not to turn the world upside down, but to do what is necessary at the given place and with a due consideration of reality.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

175. “The Christian life is participation in the encounter of Christ with the world.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

177. “Our salvation is ‘external to ourselves’. I find no salvation in my life history, but only in the history of Jesus Christ. Only he who allows himself to be found in Jesus Christ, in his incarnation, his Cross, and his resurrection, is with God and God with him.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

178. “Where God tears great gaps we should not try to fill them with human words.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

179. “Love, in the sense of spontaneous, unreflective action, spells the death of the old man.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

180. “From this it follows that the Body of Christ is the place of acceptance, the place of atonement and peace between God and man. God finds man in the Body of Christ, and man finds himself accepted by God in that same body.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

181. “The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists in listening to them. Just as love to God begins with listening to His Word, so the beginning of love for the brethren is learning to listen to them. It is God’s love for us that He not only gives us His Word but also lends us His ear. So it is His work that we do for our brother and sister when we learn to listen to them.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

182. “Discipleship never consists in this or that specific action: it is always a decision, either for or against Jesus Christ.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

183. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

184. “The essence of chastity is not the suppression of lust, but the total orientation of one’s life towards a goal. Without such a goal, chastity is bound to become ridiculous. Chastity is the sine qua non of lucidity and concentration.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

185. “Prayer is the supreme instance of the hidden character of the Christian life.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

186. “That fact that Jesus Christ died is more important than that fact that I will die.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

188. “Often we combat our evil thoughts most effectively if we absolutely refuse to allow them to be expressed in words...”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

189. “The first call which every Christian experiences is the call to abandon the attachments of this world.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

190. “The cross is suffering with Christ.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

191. “The gift of Christ is not the Christian religion, but the grace and love of God which culminate in the cross.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

192. “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. Where are these responsible people?”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

193. “When our will wholeheartedly enters into the prayer of Christ, then we pray correctly.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

194. “How is it possible to live the life of faith when we grow weary of prayer, when we lose our taste for reading the Bible, and when sleep, food and sensuality deprive us of the joy of communion with God?”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

195. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

197. “Through our daily meals He is calling us to rejoice, to keep holiday in the midst of our working day.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

198. “How can I possibly serve another person in unfeigned humility if I seriously regard his sinfulness as worse than my own?”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

199. “The Psalter is the great school of prayer.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

200. “It will always be true that the wisest course for the disciple is... to abide solely by the Word of God in all simplicity.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer