Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes

Now that I look back, I realize that a life predicated on being obedient and taking orders is a very comfortable life indeed. Living in such a way reduces to a minimum one's need to think.

This free will business is a bit terrifying anyway. It's almost pleasanter to obey, and make the most of it.

One of the guiding beliefs of our consuming age is that we are all free and independent individuals. That we can choose to do pretty much what we want, and if we can't, then it's bad. But at the same time, co-existing alongside this, there is a completely different, parallel universe where we all seem meekly to do what those in power tell us to do.

Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.

I am not bound to please thee with my answer.

There are those who dance to the rhythm that is played to them, those who only dance to their own rhythm, and those who don't dance at all.

There are people in this servile world who will endure any trampling, and at the first beck rush delightedly to proffer their assistance.

Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought.

Obedience is detachment from the self. This is the most radical detachment of all. But what is the self? The self is the principle of reason and responsibility in us. It is the root of freedom, it is what makes us men.

I'm no one's lap dog, you can't put me on a leash.

The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.

I can't imagine people telling me what to do - I just can't imagine it.

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

Rules are made for people who aren't willing to make up their own.

I've never reacted well to other people telling me what to do.

I want freedom and I realize that the only way to get it is to quit breaking the law.

True liberty consists only in the power of doing what we ought to well, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to do.

Without respect of my private will, you will give me that counsel you think best.

The individual is not accountable to society for his actions, insofar as these concern the interests of no person but himself.

It is necessary to distinguish between the virtue and the vice of obedience.

We must form men so that they can only will what we wish them to will.

Liberty is often a heavy burden on a man. It involves that necessity for perpetual choice which is the kind of labor men have always dreaded.

The path of freedom is blocked much more by those who wish to obey than by those who wish to command.

Considering mankind's indifference to freedom, their easy gullibility and their facile response to conditioning, one might very plausibly argue that collectivism is the political mode best suited to their disposition and their capacities. Under its regime, the citizen, like the soldier, is relieved of the burden of initiative and is divested of all responsibility, save for doing as he is told.

I'm done with rules that are there just to be rules.