Top 500 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

202. “Right speech comes out of silence and right silence comes out of speech.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

204. “Time is lost when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

205. “If you want my goodness to stay with you then serve your neighbor, for that is where God comes to you.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

206. “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

207. “Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

208. “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

209. “The richness of God’s Word ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

210. “The renewal of the Church will come from a new type of monasticism which only has in common with the old an uncompromising allegiance to the Sermon on the Mount. It is high time people banded together to do this.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

211. “Discipleship is commitment to Christ. Because Christ exists, he must be followed.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

212. “Whoever does not know the austere blessedness of waiting – that is, of hopefully doing without – will never experience the full blessing of fulfillment.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

214. “Perception, knowledge, and truth without love are nothing. They are not truth, for truth is God, and God is love. Therefore, truth without love is a lie.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

215. “Whenever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure is lost to the Christian church. With its recovery will come unexpected power.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

216. “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

217. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

218. “I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

219. “So the fool, as distinct from the scoundrel, is completely self- satisfied; in fact, he can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make him aggressive. A fool must therefore be treated more cautiously than a scoundrel.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

220. “Christ is not gloriously transported from earth into heaven. He must instead go to the cross. And precisely there, where the cross stands, the resurrection is near. Precisely here, where all lose faith in God, where all despair about the power of God, God is fully there, and Christ is alive and near.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

221. “Monastic life thus became a living protest against the secularization of Christianity, against the cheapening of grace.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

222. “There is no truth towards Jesus without truth towards man. Untruthfulness destroys fellowship, but truth cuts false fellowship to pieces and establishes genuine brotherhood.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

223. “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

224. “Every moment and every situation challenges us to action and to obedience. We have literally no time to sit down and ask ourselves whether so-and-so is our neighbour or not. We must get into action and obey – we must behave like a neighbour to him.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

225. “Ultimately all authority on earth must serve only the authority of Jesus Christ over humankind.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

226. “The wasted time we are ashamed of, the temptations we succumb to, the weakness and discouragement in our work, the disorder and lack of discipline in our thinking and in our dealings with other people – all these very frequently have their cause in our neglect of morning prayer.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

227. “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

228. “So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

229. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

230. “In religion, as in art and science, there are – in addition to times of great excitement – times of sober work and practice. Interaction with God must be practiced; otherwise we will not find the right tone, the right word, the right language, when he surprises us. We must learn God’s language, laboriously learn it. And we must work at it, so that we will be able to talk with him.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

231. “To be silent does not mean to be inactive; rather it means to breathe in the will of God, to listen attentively and be ready to obey.4 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Meditating on the Word.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

232. “My past life is abundantly full of God’s mercy, and, above all sin, stands the forgiving love of the Crucified.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

233. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

234. “That shows how the very notion of a suffering Messiah was a scandal to the Church, even in its earliest days. That is not the kind of Lord it wants, and as the Church of Christ it does not like to have the law of suffering imposed upon it by its Lord. Peter’s protest displays his own unwillingness to suffer, and that means that Satan has gained entry into the Church, and is trying to tear it away from the cross of its Lord.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

235. “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

236. “It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

237. “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

238. “Many persons seek community because they are afraid of loneliness... those who take refuge in community while fleeing from themselves are misuing it to indulge in empty talk and distraction, no matter how spiritual this idle talk and distraction may appear... it is precisely such misuse of community that creates deadly isolation of human beings.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

239. “So the call to discipleship is a commitment solely to the person of Jesus Christ, a breaking through of all legalisms by the grace of him who calls.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

240. “According to our text, there is no road to faith or discipleship, no other road – only obedience to the call of Jesus.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

241. “As Christ is Christ only as the suffering and rejected one, so the disciple is a disciple only as one who suffers and is rejected, as one crucified with Jesus. Discipleship, understood as being bound to the person of Jesus Christ, places the disciple under the law of Christ, that is, under the cross.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

242. “Absolute seriousness is never without a dash of humor.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

243. “You are called into the community of faith; the call was not meant for you alone. You carry your cross, you struggle, and you pray in the community of faith, the community of those who are called.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

244. “Those who seek their own honor are no longer seeking God and their neighbor.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

245. “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

246. “Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a great realist. He was one of the few who quickly understood, even before Hitler came to power, that National Socialism was a brutal attempt to make history without God and to found it on the strength of man alone.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

247. “Time lost is time not filled, time left empty.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

248. “God cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with grace and love. God makes us happy, as only children can be happy.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

249. “It is becoming clearer every day that the most urgent problem besetting our Church is this: How can we live the Christian life in the modern world?”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

250. “Only when Christian faith in God is lost do people feel compelled to make use of all means – even criminal – to force the victory of their cause.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer