A Quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

You can only learn what obedience is by obeying

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote Topics

Learn Obedience Obeying Only

Quote Author

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
German - Theologian
February 4, 1906 - April 9, 1945

Progress is not possible without discipline. A nation, institution, family or individual can advance only by heeding the words of those who deserve respect and by obeying the appropriate rules and regulations. Children, obedience is not weakness. Obedience with humility leads to discipline.

Mata Amritanandamayi

The faith which you keep must be a faith that demands obedience, and you can keep it only by obeying it.

Phillips Brooks

Humanly speaking, it is possible to understand the Sermon on the Mount in a thousand different ways. But Jesus knows only one possibility: simple surrender and obedience - not interpreting or applying it, but doing and obeying it. That is the only way to hear his words. He does not mean for us to discuss it as an ideal. He really means for us to get on with it.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Obey something, and you will have a chance to learn what is best to obey. But if you begin by obeying nothing, you will end by obeying the devil and all his invited friends.

John Ruskin

Learn obedience first. Among these Western nations, with such a high spirit of independence, the spirit of obedience is equally strong. We are all of us self-important, which never produces any work. Great enterprise, boundless courage, tremendous energy, and, above all, perfect obedience; these are the only traits that lead to individual and national regeneration. These traits are altogether lacking in us.

Swami Vivekananda

Just as Jesus learned obedience by the things He suffered, we learn obedience by the difficult circumstances we face. When we obey the Word of God that is spoken by the Holy Spirit, we will grow and mature in the times of conflict and suffering. Our knowledge of Scripture is not the key. Obedience is.

John Bevere

Be it remembered that we command nature, as it were, by obeying nature's laws; so the woman who would control her husband does so through obedience.

Thomas Chandler Haliburton

I think He made one law of that kind in order that there might be obedience. In all these other matters what you call obeying Him is but doing what seems good in your own eyes also. Is love content with that?

C. S. Lewis

If it were conceivable that in obeying God one should bring about one's own damnation whilst in disobeying him one could be saved, I should still choose the way of obedience.

Simone Weil

Resistance - that is the distinction of the slave. Let your distinction be obedience. Let your commanding itself be obeying!

Friedrich Nietzsche

When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.

Samuel Butler

By obedience a man is guarded against pride. Prayer is given for the sake of obedience. The grace of the Holy Spirit is also given for obedience. This is why obedience is higher than prayer and fasting.

Silouan the Athonite

I must be frank in my feeling that a notable heresy has come into being throughout our evangelical Christian circles -- the widely accepted concept that we humans can choose to accept Christ only because we need Him as Saviour and that we have the right to postpone our obedience to Him as Lord as long as we want to... The truth is that salvation apart from obedience is unknown in the sacred scripture... Apart from obedience, there can be no salvation, for salvation without obedience is a self-contradictory impossibility.