Quotes from Karl Barth

A free theologian works in communication with other theologians...He waits for them and asks them to wait for him. Our sadly lacking yet indispensable theological co-operation depends directly or indirectly on whether or not we are wiling to wait for one another, perhaps lamenting, yet smiling with tears in our eyes.

Everyone who has to contend with unbelief should be advised that he ought not to take his own unbelief too seriously.

That the zeal for God's honor is also a dangerous passion, that the Christian must bring with him the courage to swim against the tide instead of with it... accept a good deal of loneliness, will perhaps be nowhere so clear and palpable as in the church, where he would so much like things to be different. Yet he cannot and he will not refuse to take this risk and pay this price... he belongs where the reformation of the church is underway or will again be underway.

True theology is an actual determination and claiming of man by the acting God.

The cry of revolt against such a god [a god which just affirms the world as it is] is nearer the truth than is the sophistry with which men attempt to justify him....

Holy Communion is offered to all, as surely as the living Jesus Christ is for all, as surely as all of us are not divided in him, but belong together as brothers and sisters, all of us poor sinners, all of us rich through his mercy. Amen.

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.

Men have never been good, they are not good and they never will be good.

What God chooses for us children of men is always the best.

What is offered to man's apprehension in any specific revelation of Christ is the living God himself.

True theology is an actual determination and claiming of man by the acting God.

Impossibility is more possible than everything which we hold to be possible.

Man can certainly flee from God… but he cannot escape him. He can certainly hate God and be hateful to God, but he cannot change into its opposite the eternal love of God which triumphs even in his hate.

The person who knows only his side of the argument knows little of that.

No one can be saved - in virtue of what he can do. Everyone can be saved - in virtue of what God can do.

One can't relive one's life. Forgiveness is not what's difficult; one's always too ready to forgive. And it does no good, that's obvious.

Faith is never identical with piety even if it were the purest and finest.

Conscience is the perfect interpreter of life.

Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.

Sin scorches us most after it comes under the scrutinizing light of God's forgiveness and not before