The only way to overcome evil is to let it run itself to a stand-still because it does not find the resistance it is looking for. Resistance merely creates further evil and adds fuel to the flames. But when evil meets no opposition and encounters no obstacle but only patient endurance, its sting is drawn, and at last it meets an opponent which is more than its match. Of course this can only happen when the last ounce of resistance is abandoned, and the renunciation of revenge is complete. Then evil cannot find its mark, it can breed no further evil, and is left barren.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Humanly speaking, it is possible to understand the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways. But Jesus knows only one possibility: simple surrender and obedience – not interpreting or applying it, but doing and obeying it. That is the only way to hear his words. He does not mean for us to discuss it as an ideal. He really means for us to get on with it.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Christianity
If when we judged others, our real motive was to destroy evil, we should look for evil where it is certain to be found, and that is in our own hearts. But if we are on the look-out for evil in others, our real motive is obviously to justify ourselves.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Christmas
Only he who believes is obedient and only he who is obedient believes.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Obedience
The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Morality, Children
Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Silence
If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Change
Telling the truth … is not solely a matter of moral character; it is also a matter of correct appreciation of real situations and of serious reflection upon them.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Character, Truth
A god who let us prove his existence would be an idol.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: God
When our will wholeheartedly enters into the prayer of Christ, then we pray correctly.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Prayer
When a Christian meets with injustice, he no longer clings to his rights and defends them at all costs. He is absolutely free from possessions and bound to Christ alone.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another, except that the more bitter our enemy’s hatred, the greater his need of love. Be his enmity political or religious, he has nothing to expect from a follower of Jesus but unqualified love. In such love there is no inner discord between private person and official capacity.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
If we are to pray aright, perhaps it is quite necessary that we pray contrary to our own heart. Not what we want to pray is important, but what God wants us to pray. The richness of the Word of God ought to determine our prayer, not the poverty of our heart.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Prayer
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
Topics: Prayer
Prayer does not mean simply to pour out one’s heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with him, whether the heart is full or empty.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Prayer
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
Topics: Optimism
The mark of solitude is silence, as speech is the mark of community. Silence and speech have the same inner correspondence and difference as do solitude and community. One does not exist without the other. Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Solitude
By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which other are just as entitled to as we are.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can bring out the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them. The weak always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Decisions, Questions, Strength, Excellence
There is a very real danger of our drifting into an attitude of contempt for humanity. We know quite well that we have no right to do so, and that it would lead us into the most sterile relation to our fellow-men. The following thoughts may keep us from such a temptation. It means that we at once fall into the worst blunders of our opponents. The man who despises another will never be able to make anything of him. Nothing that we despise in the other man is entirely absent from ourselves. Why have we hitherto thought so intemperately about man and his frailty and temptability? We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer. The only profitable relationship to others—and especially to our weaker brethren—is one of love, and that means the will to hold fellowship with them. God himself did not despise humanity, but became man for men’s sake.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Suffering
How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don’t know.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Christmas, Peace
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
Topics: Christianity
We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Temptations which accompany the working day will be conquered on the basis of the morning breakthrough to God. Decisions, demanded by work, become easier and simpler where they are made not in the fear of men but only in the sight of God. He wants to give us today the power which we need for our work.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Prayer
Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Action, Motivation, Secrets of Success, Responsibility
The right way to requite evil, according to Jesus, is not to resist it. This saying of Christ removes the Church from the sphere of politics and law.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Christmas
In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Gratitude
Time is the most precious gift in our possession, for it is the most irrevocable. This is what makes it so disturbing to look back upon the time which we have lost. Time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering. Time lost is time not filled, time left empty.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Value of Time, Time Management
One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Topics: Obedience
As time is the most valuable thing that we have, because it is the most irrevocable, the thought of any lost time troubles us whenever we look back. Time lost is time in which we have failed to live a full human life, gain experience, learn, create, enjoy, and suffer; it is time that has not been filled up, but left empty.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Johann Gottfried Herder German Critic, Poet
- Paul Tillich German-American Theologian
- Martin Luther German Protestant Theologian
- Ole Hallesby Norwegian Theologian
- A. W. Tozer American Author
- Chuck Swindoll American Christian Pastor
- Johann Sebastian Bach German Composer
- Immanuel Kant Prussian German Philosopher
- Wilhelm von Humboldt German Statesman, Scholar
- Johann Jacob Zimmermann German Nonconformist Theologian
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