Top 500 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “Politics are not the task of a Christian.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

352. “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

353. “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

354. “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

355. “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

356. “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

357. “Be glad. Celebrate! Lose your mindless fear, and take courage today. No, don’t ever be afraid, no matter what’s happened to you before. That’s right, don’t be afraid, no matter what you may see coming. Take courage because Christ was crucified for you.”2 Catherine of Siena, Letters.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

358. “Here all fear of one another, all timidity about praying freely in one’s own words in the presence of others may be put aside where in all simplicity and soberness the common, brotherly prayer is lifted to God by one of the brethren. But likewise all comment and criticism must cease whenever words of prayer howsoever halting are offered in the name of Jesus Christ. It is in fact the most normal thing in the common Christian life to pray together.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

359. “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

360. “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

361. “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

362. “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

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

364. “To bear the burden of the other person means involvement with the created reality of the other, to accept and affirm it, and, in bearing with it, to break through to the point where we take joy ink.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

365. “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

366. “Struggling against the legalism of simple obedience, we end by setting up the most dangerous law of all, the law of the world and the law of grace. In our effort to combat legalism we land ourselves in the worst kind of legalism. The only way of overcoming this legalism is by real obedience to Christ when he calls us to follow him; for in Jesus the law is at once fulfilled and cancelled.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

367. “Nothing can be more cruel than that leniency which abandons others to their sin.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

369. “If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if, on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

370. “The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

371. “Human beings have freedom toward death and the right to death, in the sense of sacrifice, but only when the good sought through sacrifice, and not the destruction of one’s own life, is the reason for risking one’s life.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

372. “We are certainly not Christ; we are not called on to redeem the world by our own deeds and sufferings, and we need not try to assume such an impossible burden. We are not lords, but instruments in the hand of the Lord of history; and we can share in other people’s sufferings only to a very limited degree.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

373. “There is no fulfilment of the law apart from communion with God, and no communion with God apart from fulfilment of the law.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

374. “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

375. “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

376. “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

377. “We can of course shake off the burden which is laid upon us, but only find that we have a still heavier burden to carry – a yoke of our own choosing, the yoke of our self.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

378. “With the birth of Jesus, the great kingdom of peace has begun.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

379. “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

380. “Yet neither father nor mother, neither wife nor child, neither nationality nor tradition, can protect a man at the moment of his call. It is Christ’s will that he should be thus isolated, and that he should fix his eyes solely upon him.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

381. “I have never seen the swing from “Hosanna!” to “Crucify!” more graphically evoked than in the virtually insane way the crowd goes berserk when the toreador makes an adroit turn, and they immediately follow this with insane howling and whistling when some mishap occurs. The momentary character of this mass mood goes so far that they applaud for the bull and against the toreador if, for example, the latter proves to be cowardly and – quite understandably – his courage fails him for a moment.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

382. “But when we create our own God and our own world, what we are really doing is to deify our own lust. We are then bound to hate our fellow-men, as obstacles standing in the way of our wills.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

383. “No sacrifice which a lover would make for his beloved is too great for us to make for our enemy.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

384. “Total war uses every conceivable means toward the end of national self-preservation. Everything is right and permitted that serves the cause of one’s own people.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

385. “Nietzsche could have arisen only from the soil of the German Reformation. Here, the contradiction between the natural and grace is starkly opposed to the reconciliation of nature with grace in the Roman heritage.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

386. “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

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

388. “The attempt to understand reality apart from that action of God in and upon reality means living in anabstraction; it means failing to live in reality and vacillating between the extremes of a servile attitude toward the status quo and a protest in principle against it. Only God’s becoming human makes possible an action that is genuinely in accord with reality. The world remains world. But it only does so because God has taken care of it and declared it to be under God’s rule.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

390. “The believer need not feel any shame when yearning for the physical presence of other Christians, as if one were still living too much in the flesh. A human being is created as a body; the Son of God appeared on earth in the body for our sake and was raised in the body.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

391. “Therefore, let those who until now have had the privilege of living a Christian life together with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of their hearts. Let them thank God on their knees and realize: it is grace, nothing but grace, that we are still permitted to live in the community of Christians today.32.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

392. “With that we have articulated a basic criticism of the most grandiose of all human attempts to advance toward the divine – by way of the church. Christianity conceals within itself a germ hostile to the church. It is far too easy for us to base our claims to God on our own Christian religiosity and our church commitment, and in so doing utterly to misunderstand and distort the Christian idea.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

393. “How could one person pray the prayer of the community without being held up and supported in prayer by the community itself? At precisely this point every word of criticism must be transformed into more faithful intercession and mutual help. How easily a community can split apart if this is not done!”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

394. “Since God, however, as ultimate reality is no other than the self-announcing, self-witnessing, self-revealing God in Jesus Christ, the question of good can only find its answer in Christ.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

395. “They believe that a good intention already means a new beginning; they believe that on their own they can make a new start whenever they want. But that is an evil illusion: only God can make a new beginning with people whenever God pleases, but not people with God.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

396. “Had Levi stayed at his post, Jesus might have been his present help in trouble, but not the Lord of his whole life. In other words Levi would never have learnt to believe.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

397. “The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more assuredly and consistently will community increase and grow from day to day as God pleases.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

398. “The real trouble is that the pure Word of Jesus has been overlaid with so much human ballast – burdensome rules and regulations, false hopes and consolations – that it has become extremely difficult to make a genuine decision for Christ.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

399. “One doesn’t cling anxiously to life, but neither does one throw it lightly away. One is content with measured time and does not attribute eternity to earthly things. One leaves to death the limited right that it still has. But one expects the new human being and the new world only frombeyond death, from the power that has conquered death.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

400. “Events cast their shadows ahead; before a harsh winter, wild animals grow thicker fur, and the beaver puts on a thicker layer of fat. What kind of times and what sort of tasks can lie ahead for a generation that must think so harshly, even at such a young age, in order to survive?”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer