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What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straghtforward men.

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
Plain
Clever
Genius
Honest
Shall
Need
Misanthrope
Needs
Cynics
Men
Geniuses

More quotes by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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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
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Every wedding must be an occasion of joy that human beings can do such great things, that they have been given such immense freedom and power to take the helm in their life's journey.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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While we exert ourselves to grow beyond our humanity, to leave the human behind us, God becomes human and we must recognize that God wills that we be human, real human beings. While we distinguish between pious and godless, good and evil, noble and base, God loves real people without distinction.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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In Jesus, the service of God and the service of the least of the brethren were one.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists of listening to them. Just as love of God begins with listening to his word, so the beginning of love for our brothers and sisters is learning to listen to them.
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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God loves human beings. God loves the world. Not an ideal human, but human beings as they are not an ideal world, but the real world. What we find repulsive in their opposition to God, what we shrink back from with pain and hostility, namely, real human beings, the real world, this is for God the ground of unfathomable love.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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May God in His mercy lead us through these times but above all, may He lead us to Himself.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Good Friday and Easter free us to think about other things far beyond our own personal fate, about the ultimate meaning of all life, suffering, and events and we lay hold of a great hope.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Only the suffering God can help.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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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
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...And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Desires to which we cling closely can easily prevent us from being what we ought to be and can be and on the other hand, desires repeatedly mastered for the sake of present duty make us richer.Lack of desire is poverty.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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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
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A pastor should never complain about his congregation, certainly never to other people, but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to him in order that he should become its accuser before God and men.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Comfort the troubled, and trouble the comfortable.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won where the way leads to the cross.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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There remains an experience of incomparable value . . . to see the great events of world history from below from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled ---- in short, from the perspective of those who suffer . . . to look with new eyes on matters great and small.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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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
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The Church is the Church only when it exists for others.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer