Quote

Political action means taking on responsibility. This cannot happen without power. Power is to serve responsibility.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Age: 39 †
Born: 1906
Born: February 4
Died: 1945
Died: April 8
Pastor
Philosopher
Poet
Resistance Fighter
Theologian
Breslau
Bonhoeffer
Mean
Responsibility
Means
Action
Political
Happens
Cannot
Serve
Power
Taking
Without
Happen

More quotes by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Faith without works is not faith at all, but a simple lack of obedience to God.
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There remains an experience of incomparable value.
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Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy.
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The 'polymath' had already died out by the close of the eighteenth century, and in the following century intensive education replaced extensive, so that by the end of it the specialist had evolved. The consequence is that today everyone is a mere technician, even the artist.
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Every call of Christ leads into death.
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Wherever it pleases God to put man in this world, the Christian must be ready for martyrdom and death. It is only in this way that man learns faith.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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When a man really gives up trying to make something out of himself - a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called clerical somebody), a righteous or unrighteous man,...and throws himself into the arms of God...then he wakes with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith, that is metanoia and it is thus that he becomes a man and Christian.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Nothing can be more cruel than the leniency which abandons others to their sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe reprimand which calls another Christian in one’s community back from the path of sin.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Whenever Christ calls us, His call leads us to death.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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By his willingly renouncing self-defence, the Christian affirms his absolute adherence to Jesus, and his freedom from the tyranny of his own ego. The exclusiveness of this adherence is the only power which can overcome evil.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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When you read the Bible, you must think that here and now, God is speaking with me
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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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
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He who loves community destroys community he who loves the brethren builds community.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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And we simply cannot be constant with the fact that God’s cause is not always the successful one, that we really could be “unsuccessful” and yet be on the right road. But this is where we find out whether we have begun in faith or in a burst of enthusiasm.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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God has reserved to Himself the right to determine the end of life, because He alone knows the goal to which it is His will to lead it. It is for Him alone to justify a life or to cast it away.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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God has willed that we should seek and find God's living Word in the testimony of other Christians, in the mouths of human beings.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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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
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God is not free from human beings but for them.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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The church ... is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to put a spoke in the wheel itself.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer