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
The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A society's moral values are reflected in how it treats its children.
This quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer highlights the fundamental moral responsibility of a society to care for its children. It posits that the true measure of a society's integrity and ethics can be gauged by the attention, resources, and love it devotes to nurturing and protecting the younger generation, who are the future of that society.
Themes
MoralitySocietyChildrenEthicsResponsibility
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about community values, this quote can emphasize the importance of child welfare programs.
More from Dietrich Bonhoeffer
All quotes βIn 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 letβs 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
As an individual who undertakes to live by borrowing, soon finds his original means devoured by interest, and next no one left to borrow from - so must it be with a government.
Abraham LincolnRead
I am persuaded, you will permit me to observe, that the path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction.
George WashingtonRead
Perhaps you considered yourself an oracle, Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other. Thirty years now I have labored To dredge the silt from your throat. I am none the wiser.
Sylvia PlathRead
In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Diversity of character is due to their unequal activity.
Ambrose BierceRead
On religion in particular, the time appears to me to have come, when it is a duty of all who, being qualified in point of knowledge, have, on mature consideration, satisfied themselves that the current opinions are not only false, but hurtful, to make their dissent known.
John Stuart MillRead
Understand: any phenomenon in the world is by nature complex. The people you deal with are equally complex. Any action sets off a limitless chain of reactions. It is never so simple as A leads to B. B will lead to C, D and beyond.
Robert GreeneRead