Quotes from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone.

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

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

Death reveals that the world is not as it should be but that it stands in need of redemption. Christ alone is the conquering of death.

Every call of Christ leads into death.

Every Christian community must realize that not only do the weak need the strong, but also that the strong cannot exist without the weak. The elimination of the weak is the death of fellowship.

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.

Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy

After death something new begins, over which all powers of the world of death have no more might.

A god who let us prove his existence would be an idol.

Only he who believes is obedient and only he who is obedient believes.

Faith is only real when there is obedience, never without it, and faith only becomes faith in the act of obedience.

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

Death is hell and night and cold, if it is not transformed by our faith. But that is just what is so marvelous, that we can transform death.

Then fear will grow pale and fade away, and you will be free, through your faith in our strong and living Savior, Jesus Christ.

A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes...and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.

Earthly possessions dazzle our eyes and delude us into thinking that they can provide security and freedom from anxiety. Yet all the time they are the very source of anxiety.

Freedom for the Church comes from the necessity of the Word of God. Otherwise, it becomes arbitrariness and ends in a great many new ties.

Being a Christan is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.