Quotes about Resistance

In those days," Ruth-Alice recalled, "the Nazis were always marching and saying, 'The future belongs to us! We are the future!' And we young ones who were against Hitler and the Nazis would hear this and we wondered, 'Where is our future?' But there in Finkenwalde, when I heard this man preaching, who had been captured by God, I thought: 'Here. Here is our future.

Years later, after Niemöller had been imprisoned for eight years in concentration camps as the personal prisoner of Adolf Hitler, he penned these infamous words: First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Bonhoeffer's three conclusions—that the church must question the state, help the state's victims, and work against the state, if necessary—were too much for almost everyone. But for him they were inescapable. In time, he would do all three.

Bonhoeffer thought of death as the last station on the road to freedom.

Our rejection of the occupier at heart is resistance.

The more bare a life is, the more we fear change.

I read a story about an old gentlemen who was known for his godly life. Someone asked him one day, "What do you do when you are tempted, old man?" He replied, "I just look up to Heaven and say, 'Lord, your property is in danger.'

The greatest miracle of omnipotence was in creating beings who had the potential to resist it.

It is a religious spirit that is dedicated to what God has done in order to resist or reject what He is doing. What He is presently doing He is doing through His body.

Love demands freedom. It always has, and it always will. We are free to resist, reject, and rebel against God's ways for us. We can have all the hell we want.

It's hard enough now, so I won't make it any harder. I want to go out so much—everything seems to be calling to me, 'Anne, Anne, come out to us. Anne, Anne, we want a playmate'—but it's better not. There is no use in loving things if you have to be torn from them, is there?

Counseling that attempts to logically teach new truth without concern for the emotional threat involved in changing one's approach to meeting personal needs will plow headlong into resistance.