QuoteProject
It is very easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements in comparison with what we owe others.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

We often undervalue the contributions of others while overvaluing our own successes.

This quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer highlights the tendency of individuals to focus excessively on their personal accomplishments, neglecting the roles and support provided by others in their journey. It serves as a reminder to recognize and appreciate the interdependence of achievements, where collective efforts often play a crucial role in individual success.

Themes

AchievementsInterdependenceGratitudeHumility

In practice

Example use cases

In a motivational speech to emphasize teamwork in the workplace.

More from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

A home is a kingdom of it's own in the midst of the world, a stronghold amid life's storms and stresses, a refuge, even a sanctuary.
Dietrich BonhoefferRead
In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.
Dietrich BonhoefferRead
Sometimes we just need a firm kick in the pants. An unsmiling expectation that if we mean all these wonderful things we talk about and sing about, then let’s see something to prove it.
Dietrich BonhoefferRead
It is God's earth out of which man is taken. From it he has his body. His body belongs to his essential being. Man's body is not his prison, his shell his exterior, but man himself. Man does not "have" a body; he does not "have" a soul; rather he "is" body and soul. Man in the beginning is really his body. He is one. He is his body, as Christ is completely his body, as the Church is the body of Christ
Dietrich BonhoefferRead
...And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all.
Dietrich BonhoefferRead
Anyone who thinks that his time is too valuable to spend keeping quiet will eventually have no time for God and his brother, but only for himself and for his own follies.
Dietrich BonhoefferRead

Similar quotes

I like imagination -- and the way I think things could be, had been, or should be -- better than reality.
Karl LagerfeldRead
The purpose of the Constitution is to restrict the majority's ability to harm a minority.
James MadisonRead
All of us have to deal with death at one time or another, but to have in one's heart a solid conviction concerning the reality of eternal life is to bring a sense of peace in an hour of tragedy that can come from no other source under the heavens
Gordon B. HinckleyRead
A man on a horse is spiritually, as well as physically, bigger then a man on foot.
John SteinbeckRead
There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate, so let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.
Bob DylanRead
I have watched them all day and they are the same men that we are. I believe that I could walk up to the mill and knock on the door and I would be welcome except that they have orders to challenge all travelers and ask to see their papers. It is only orders that come between us. Those men are not fascists. I call them so, but they are not. They are poor men as we are. They should never be fighting against us and I do not like to think of the killing.
Ernest HemingwayRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.