Quotes About Action

Bonhoeffer was not interested in intellectual abstraction. Theology must lead to the practical aspects of how to live as a Christian.

He had theologically redefined the Christian life as something active, not reactive. It had nothing to do with avoiding sin or with merely talking or teaching or believing theological notions or principles or rules or tenets. It had everything to do with living one's whole life in obedience to God's call through action.

We pretend we would have spoken out for the Jews in Bonhoeffer's day, or that we would have spoken against the slave trade in Wilberforce's day, but are we speaking out today on the issues that are no less important to God in our time? If not, we are deceiving ourselves.

But making the greater mistake of being paralyzed to inaction—for fear of making a mistake—for fear of stepping outside some false religious boundary, is something else. For that kind of inaction reveals what we really think of God, that he is a legalistic moral policeman waiting for us to slip up just so that he can make his arrest quota for the day.

What madness is the course I am pursuing. I believe all the great truths of the Christian religion, but I am not acting as though I did. Should I die in this state I must go into a place of misery.

If a Christian may act in the several relations of life, must he seclude himself for all to become so? Surely the principles as well as the practice of Christianity are simple, and lead not to meditation only but to action.

Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behaviour. The Christian is called to sympathy and action, not in the first place by his own sufferings, but by the sufferings of his brethren, for whose sake Christ suffered.

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!

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.

Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.

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.

Reading is good, action is better.

a consequence

As Peter Drucker said, "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.

Strategic planning takes months to complete; these experiments could begin immediately.

You have to do to be.

approached the two guards, smiling. John knew her smile wasn't friendly. She was smiling because she was finally getting a chance to put her training to the test. Kelly waved to the guard and pulled open the door. He asked her to stop and show her identification. She stepped inside, grabbed his rifle, twisted, and dragged him inside with her. The

Chapter Twenty-Five

He couldn't know the future. He had to do what he could to save every person. Today. Now.

The difference between the men and the boys in politics is, and always has been, that the boys want to be something, while the men want to do something.

Got it!" Mike announced. The GE record player slowly whirred to life, creaky as an old carousel. "Nice," John said, raising a beer in salute. "What'd you do?" "It wasn't on," Mike said.

Don't think about what can happen in a month. Don't think about what can happen in a year. Just focus on the 24 hours in front of you and do what you can to get closer to where you want to be.

Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen" - Michael Jordan

Done is better than perfect if perfect ain't done.