Top 500 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “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

152. “Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

153. “Those who have found God in the cross of Jesus Christ know how wonderfully God hides himself in this world and how he is closest precisely when we believe him to be most distant.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

157. “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

158. “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

159. “There is no kindness more cruel than the kindness which consigns another person to their sin.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

160. “When we received forgiveness instead of judgment, we too were made ready to forgive each other. What God did to us, we then owed to others. The more we received, the more we were able to give; and the more meager our love for one another, the less we were living by God’s mercy and love.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

161. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” This saying, which is found in a broad variety of lands, does not arise from the brash worldly wisdom of an incorrigible. It instead reveals deep Christian insight.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

162. “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

163. “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

164. “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

165. “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

166. “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

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

169. “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

170. “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

171. “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

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

174. “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

Featured in: Strong Quotes

175. “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

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

177. “Seek God, not happiness – this is the fundamental rule of all meditation. If you seek God alone, you will gain happiness: that is its promise.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

178. “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

179. “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

180. “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

181. “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

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

183. “I’m still discovering, right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing, we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

184. “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

185. “Often we are so burdened and overwhelmed with other thoughts, images, and concerns that it may take a long time before God’s Word has cleared all that away and gets through to us.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

189. “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

190. “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

191. “God hates this wishful dreaming because it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. Those who dream of this idealized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others, and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands, set up their own law, and judge one another and even God accordingly.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

192. “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

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

196. “And take up their cross.” That cross is already there, ready, from the very beginning; we need only take it up. But to keep us from believing that we must simply choose any arbitrary cross, or simply pick out our suffering as we will, Jesus emphasizes that each of us has his or her own cross, ready, appointed, and appropriately measured by God.1.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

198. “Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

199. “To those who recognize in Jesus the wonder of the Son of God, every one of his words and deeds becomes a wonder; they find in him the last, most profound, most helpful counsel for all needs and questions. Yes, before the child can open his lips, he is full of wonder and full of counsel. Go to the child in the manger. Believe him to be the Son of God, and you will find in him wonder upon wonder, counsel upon counsel.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

200. “The cross is suffering with Christ.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer