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A being is free only when it can determine and limit its activity.

Karl Barth

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Karl Barth
Age: 82 †
Born: 1886
Born: May 10
Died: 1968
Died: December 10
Pastor
Theologian
University Teacher
Basle
Limit
Determine
Limits
Activity
Free

More quotes by Karl Barth

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Humanity in its basic form is co-humanity.
Karl Barth
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To be a Christian and to pray are one and the same thing it is a matter that cannot be left to our caprice. It is a need, a kind of breathing necessary to life.
Karl Barth
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There will be no song on our lips if there be no anguish in our hearts.
Karl Barth
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I take the Bible far too seriously to take it literally.
Karl Barth
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The statement that 'God is dead' comes from Nietzsche and has recently been trumpeted abroad by some German and American theologians. But the good Lord has not died of this He who dwells in the heaven laughs at them.
Karl Barth
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The theologian who labours without joy is not a theologian at all.
Karl Barth
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If I have a system it is limited to a recognition of what Kierkegaard called 'the infinite qualitative distinction' between time and eternity
Karl Barth
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Whether the angels play only Bach praising God, I am not quite sure.
Karl Barth
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It may be that when the angels go about their task praising God, they play only Bach. I am sure, however, that when they are together en famille they play Mozart.
Karl Barth
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We must read the Bible through the eyes of shipwrecked people for whom everything has gone overboard.
Karl Barth
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The person who knows only his side of the argument knows little of that.
Karl Barth
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Faith is never identical with piety even if it were the purest and finest.
Karl Barth
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As ministers we ought to speak of God. We are human, however, and so cannot speak of God. We ought therefore to recognize both our obligation and our inability and by that very recognition give glory to God
Karl Barth
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I have read many books, but the Bible reads me.
Karl Barth
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When the frontier between God and man, the last inexorable barrier and obstacle, is not closed, the barrier between what is normal and what is perverse is opened.
Karl Barth
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Dogmatics is the testing of Church doctrine and proclamation.
Karl Barth
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Where dogmatics exists at all, it exists only with the will to be a Church dogmatics, a dogmatics of the ecumenical Church.
Karl Barth
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Man can certainly flee from God... but he cannot escape him. He can certainly hate God and be hateful to God, but he cannot change into its opposite the eternal love of God which triumphs even in his hate.
Karl Barth
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Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone.
Karl Barth
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Radically and basically, all sin is simply ingratitude.
Karl Barth