Dietrich Bonhoeffer People Quotations

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.

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.

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.

God can make a new beginning with people whenever God pleases, but not people with God. Therefore, people cannot make a new beginning at all; they can only pray for one. Where people are on their own and live by their own devices, there is only the old, the past.

Advent creates people, new people.

It is the nature of strong people that they can bring out crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them.

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.

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.

We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God's coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God's coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.

The church is not a religious community of worshippers of Christ but is Christ himself who has taken form among people.

The person who’s in love with their vision of community will destroy community. But the person who loves the people around them will create community everywhere they go.

Many people are looking for an ear that will listen. They do not find it among Christians because we are talking when we should be listening.

We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us people with claims and petitions.

Neighbourliness is not a quality in other people, it is simply their claim on ourselves.

A person who loves community tends to destroy it. But a person who loves people creates community wherever he goes.

When people are deeply affected by the Word, they tell it to other people.

The restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising discipleship, following Christ according to the sermon on the mount. I believe the time has come to gather people together to do this.

Where a people prays, there is the church; and where the church is; there is never loneliness.