Quotes about Truth

Respect for truth and for other human beings of different opinions formed the foundation of a civil society in which one might disagree graciously and might reason together civilly and productively.

If we believe miracles cannot happen today but happened to our distant ancestors, what we really seem to be saying is not that miracles happened back then but, rather, that all those people back then were naive enough to believe they happened. It is to say that miracles never happened, but gullible people thought they did.

The place where the questions about the reality of God and about the reality of the world are answered at the same time is characterized solely by the name: Jesus Christ. God and the world are enclosed in this name . . . we cannot speak rightly of either God or the world without speaking of Jesus Christ. All concepts of reality that ignore Jesus Christ are abstractions.

Even if you were to knock my head off, God would still exist.

If it turns out that the thing we believed in or wanted to believe in is not true and real, we may experience a momentary letdown, but in the end we will be in a far better place than if we had blindly clung to something that was really just wish-fulfillment.

Religion to other religions. Then he came to his main point: the essence of Christianity is not about religion at all, but about the person of Christ.

Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot imagine a scientist without that profound faith.

Years later it occurred to me that I was doing the same thing when I was helping my daughter memorize "Paul Revere's Ride." I was teaching her to love sacrifice and goodness and truth and beauty, and I was teaching her the history of America and therefore teaching her to love America.

Anyone on the side of truth, wherever it led, was a compatriot to be lauded.

Perhaps even more important in the Bonhoeffer family was acting upon what one said one believed. One must not only think clearly but must prove one's thoughts in action. If one was unprepared to live out what one claimed to believe, perhaps one didn't believe what one claimed after all!

There's no sense to expect the fruits where the Word really is no longer being preached.

Bonhoeffer was no mere academic. For him, ideas and beliefs were nothing if they did not relate to the world of reality outside one's mind.