Top 500 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes (2023 Update)
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301. “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

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

303. “It is infinitely easier to suffer in obedience to a human command than to accept suffering as free, responsible men.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

304. “We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us.4 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “The Coming of Jesus in Our Midst.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

306. “There remains an experience of incomparable value.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

307. “At the beginning of a new year, many people have nothing better to do than to make a list of bad deeds and resolve from now on – how many such “from-now-ons” have there already been! – to begin with better intentions, but they are still stuck in the middle of their paganism.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

308. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

309. “The future and the hope for the middle class church lies in the renewal of its lifeblood, which is only possible if the church succeeds in winning the working class.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

310. “God cannot endure that unfestive, mirthless attitude of ours in which we eat our bread in sorrow, with pretentious, busy haste, or even with shame. Through our daily meals He is calling us to rejoice, to keep holiday in the midst of our working day.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

311. “There is only one church, the church of faith ruled by the word of Jesus Christ alone. This is the true catholic church that has never disappeared and is still concealed in the church of Rome. It is the body of Christ – corpus Christi. It is the true unity of the West.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

312. “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

313. “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

314. “Principles are only tools in the hands of God; they will soon be thrown away when they are no longer useful.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

315. “Wherever there are sinners, the weak, the sorrowful, the poor in the world, that is where God goes.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

316. “Every Christian must be fully Christian by bringing God into his whole life, not merely into some spiritual realm.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

317. “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

318. “The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

319. “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

320. “Neighbourliness is not a quality in other people, it is simply their claim on ourselves.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

321. “God’s truth judges created things out of love, and Satan’s truth judges them out of envy and hatred.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

322. “No one knows God unless God reveals Himself to him.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

323. “Not hero worship, but intimacy with Christ.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

324. “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

325. “The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

326. “Before Jesus leads His disciples into suffering, humiliation, disgrace, and disdain, He summons them and shows Himself to them as the Lord in God’s glory.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

327. “Radicalism hates time. Compromise hates eternity. Radicalism hates patience. Compromise hates decision. Radicalism hates wisdom. Compromise hates simplicity. Radicalism hates measure. Compromise hates the immeasurable.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

328. “Help must come from the outside, and it has come and comes daily and answers in the Word of Jesus Christ...”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

329. “Those who are still afraid of men have no fear of God, and those who have fear of God have ceased to be afraid of men. All preachers of the gospel will do well to recollect this saying daily.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

330. “Not enslaved to principles but bound by love for God, they have become free from the problems and conflicts of ethical decision. They are no longer weighed down by them. They belong completely and solely to God and God’s will.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

331. “Jesus is the only significance. Beside Jesus nothing has any significance. He alone matters.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

332. “Are you afraid of God’s wrath? Then go to the child in the manger and receive there the peace of God.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

333. “Only he who gives thanks for little things receives the big things. We prevent God from giving us the great spiritual gifts he has in store for us, because we do not give thanks for daily gifts.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

334. “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

335. “If religion is onlya garment of Christianityand even this garment has looked very different at different timesthen what is religionless Christianity?”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

336. “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.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

337. “We cannot approach the manger of the Christ child in the same way we approach the cradle of another child. Rather, when we go to his manger, something happens, and we cannot leave it again unless we have been judged or redeemed. Here we must either collapse or know the mercy of God directed toward us.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

338. “Man seeks, in his manhood, not orders, not laws and peremptory dogmas, but counsel from one who is earnest in goodness and faithful in friendship, making man free.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

339. “Why do I meditate? Because I am a Christian. Therefore, every day in which I do not penetrate more deeply into the knowledge of God’s Word in Holy Scripture is a lost day for me. I can only move forward with certainty upon the firm ground of the Word of God. And, as a Christian, I learn to know the Holy Scripture in no other way than by hearing the Word preached and by prayerful meditation.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

340. “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

341. “The world upon whom grace is thrust as a bargain will grow tired of it.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

342. “If we want to participate in this Advent and Christmas event, we cannot simply sit there like spectators in a theater and enjoy all the friendly pictures. Rather, we must join in the action that is taking place and be drawn into this reversal of all things ourselves. Here we too must act on the stage, for here the spectator is always a person acting in the drama. We cannot remove ourselves from the action.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

343. “Christianity without the living Jesus Christ remains necessarily a Christianity without discipleship; and a Christianity without discipleship is always a Christianity without Jesus Christ. It is an idea, a myth.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

344. “Suffering means being cut off from God. Therefore those who live in communion with him cannot really suffer.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

345. “It is much easier for me to imagine a praying murderer, a praying prostitute, than a vain person praying. Nothing is so at odds with prayer as vanity.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

346. “Jesus himself had called and chosen Judas! That is the real mystery, for Jesus knew from the beginning who would betray him.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

347. “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

348. “Anxiety creates its own treasures and they in turn beget further care. When we seek for security in possessions we are trying to drive out care with care, and the net result is the precise opposite of our anticipations. The fetters which bind us to our possessions prove to be cares themselves.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

349. “The immanent righteousness of history rewards and punishes only men’s deeds, but the eternal righteousness of God tries and judges their hearts.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

350. “May we be enabled to say “No” to sin and “Yes” to the sinner.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer