Quotes About Conviction

How could you determine a man's intention if you didn't speak his language or share his beliefs? She'd happily embarked on a study of ancient Egyptian religion but had no curiosity about Islam, which seemed an amalgam of oddities and borrowings. She felt with conviction what she'd written home more than once--that Egypt would be an exquisite country if not for the Egyptians who lived there.

A cause may be inconvenient, but it's magnificent. It's like champagne or high heels, and one must be prepared to suffer for it.

aquello en lo que creemos nos sostiene, actúa como tierra firme sobre la que pisamos. El que no tiene esquemas claros en su mente está desorientado y no sabe ni lo que quiere ni hacia dónde va.

Non bisogna far violenza sulla natura ma persuaderla.

onde uma nova teoria supõe uma questão que entraria em conflito com um fato previamente estabelecido com convicção, a nova teoria deve ser rejeitada.

God desires the sinner to turn away from the darkness of his own nothingness and void and come to himself, to draw life from his life. Sin is grounded in an illusion concerning my own alleged greatness and worth in my own eyes. Repentance is grounded, not in a desire to abase myself, but in a clear understanding and a profound conviction of my great worth in the eyes of God.

Don't ever put your life on the line for something you don't believe in.

The war vindicated their conviction, itself a product of the slavery controversy, that freedom stood in greater danger of abridgment from local than national authority (a startling reversal of the founding fathers' belief, enshrined in the Bill of Rights, that centralized power posed the major threat to individual liberties).

We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.

Take away hatred from some people, and you have men without faith.

The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than a deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without.

We cannot be sure that we have something to live for unless we are ready to die for it.

I think that what I'm doing is right. And election-year politics, which intensifies everything, is not going to drive me off that course.

Actions must follow what one believed, else one could not claim to believe it.

Bonhoeffer himself knew that in all of it, he was being utterly obedient to God. For him, that was the cantus firmus that made the dizzying complexities of it all perfectly coherent.

If I know something to be true, am I prepared to follow it even though it is contrary to what I want[?]

So what is "heart"? It's courage, but courage to do what? The courage to do the right thing when all else tells you not to do it. The courage to rise above your surroundings and circumstances. The courage to be God's idea of a real man and to give of yourself for others when it costs you to do so and when everything tells you to look out for yourself first.

It must be made quite clear—terrifying though it is—that we are immediately faced with the decision: National Socialist or Christian . . .

The religion of Christ," he said, "is not a tidbit after one's bread; on the contrary, it is the bread or it is nothing. People should at least understand and concede this if they call themselves Christian.

Do not defend God's Word, but testify to it .

Some wondered whether he was just kicking against the goads, but when someone asked Bonhoeffer whether he shouldn't join the German Christians in order to work against them from within, he answered that he couldn't. "If you board the wrong train," he said, "it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction

291 The German Christians had convinced themselves that "evangelizing" Germany was worth any price, including eviscerating the gospel by preaching hatred against the Jews. But Bonhoeffer knew that twisting the truth to sell it more effectively was not confined to the German Christians. Members of the Confessing Church had also shaved the truth betimes.