Dietrich Bonhoeffer Quotes

Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous fact lies the peril and Responsibility of our existence.

I can't judge the way other people behave. I can only look at myself.

To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.

So then, when I speak to you, I speak to myself. If I seem to warn or to rebuke you, it is not so much you, as myself, to whom the warning or the rebuke is addressed.

I think was overly empathetic for a while in my life.

I'm not afraid to blame myself for any of my own faults or just to analyze things in a different way, but I don't overanalyze, either.

I'm not saying I'm perfect. But I'm someone who analyses and reflects on what I do, whether it's in keeping with the ethics that I talk about in public. That's how I've been all my life.

Today I acknowledge that I am not in position to judge what mistakes anyone is making or what lessons anyone needs to learn. I don’t know how far someone has come or when that person will have a breakthrough, I simply don’t know what other people should be doing. But when I think I do know, I clearly am not doing what I should be doing, which is taking responsibility for my own life.

If you have a problem at that level where there is hatred, prejudice, and anger, that has nothing to do with the other person. What is wrong with you that you are feeling that way? Look at yourself. Quite often it is their upbringing or their parent's problems. You got to get free. At some point you have to take responsibility for your actions.

My strengths make me contemptuous. My weaknesses make me charitable.

A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what's going on inside of himself or herself ... lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.

Judge yourself; if you sincerely and humbly do that, you will not be judged by God.

It never occurs to me that I'd be intimidating to anybody. Maybe I should consider that.

I think you gotta have an honesty and a humility about human nature and that it's not about you at the end of the day.

We imagine that if we had time we would quiet our more shallow selves and listen to a deeper flow of inspiration. Again, this is a myth that lets us off the hook - if I wait for enough time to listen, I don't have to listen now, I don't have to take responsibility for being available to what is trying to bubble up today.

And so my hope for you, good boy, as you grow taller every day, is that you will learn to take good care of yourself, and you will learn to take good care of others-and, someday, you'll see how those two things are exactly the same.

I take the greatest lesson from compassion - it takes away all the conceit out of my life.

It is a whole lot easier to see our problems in others than it is to see them in ourselves.

I grew up in a religious family and, like, that was a very big part of my life, and still, very much, is even though I don't affiliate with any specific religion. It's just, for me, you know, the spirituality of being able to own up to your sins, as they're called, and take responsibility for your actions really hit me this time around.

The more I reflect and look back on the past, the more vividly do I feel my limitations.

Success is all about being able to extend love to people. The people I consider successful are so because of how they handle their responsibilities to other people, how they approach the future, people who have a full sense of the value of their life and what they want to do with it.

Instead of always asking yourself why so-and-so acts this or that way, learn to ask: "What's inside of me that wants to hurt itself over how anyone else acts?"

I see what you mean. It must be a huge relief, and an easy way out, to think the devil is always outside of us. (…) we would stop looking for Sheitan outside and instead focus on ourselves. What we need is sincere self-examination. Not being on the watch for the faults of others.” (p. 257).

So long as we are full of self we are shocked at the faults of others. Let us think often of our own sin, and we shall be lenient to the sins of others.

One can only face in others what one can face in oneself.