Martin Luther Quotes

“‎What you do in your house is worth as much as if you did it up in heaven for our Lord God. We should accustom ourselves to think of our position and work as sacred and well-pleasing to God, not on account of the position and work, but on account of the word and faith from which the obedience and work flow.”
― Martin Luther

“Every book is a great action and every great action is a book!”
― Martin Luther

“Never undermine the power of passion. You have a very high chance of achieving anything you are passionate about.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts

“[Martin] Luther, we grant, overcame bondage out of devotion by replacing it by bondage out of conviction. He shattered faith in authority because he restored the authority of faith. He turned priests into laymen because he turned laymen into priests. He freed man from outer religiosity because he made religiosity the inner man. He freed the body from chains because he enchained the heart.”
― Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

“Leadership is self-made. People who have deliberately decided to become problems solver lead better.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts

“Manifest in this trade (commercial sale of indulgences via bankers) at the same time was a pernicious tendency in the Roman Catholic system, for the trade in indulgences was not an excess or an abuse but the direct consequence of the nomistic degradation of the gospel. That the Reformation started with Luther’s protest against this traffic in indulgences proves its religious origin and evangelical character. At issue here was nothing less than the essential character of the gospel, the core of Christianity, the nature of true piety. And Luther was the man who, guided by experience in the life of his own soul, again made people understand the original and true meaning of the gospel of Christ. Like the “righteousness of God,” so the term “penitence” had been for him one of the most bitter words of Holy Scripture. But when from Romans 1:17 he learned to know a “righteousness by faith,” he also learned “the true manner of penitence.” He then understood that the repentance demanded in Matthew 4:17 had nothing to do with the works of satisfaction required in the Roman institution of confession, but consisted in “a change of mind in true interior contrition” and with all its benefits was itself a fruit of grace. In the first seven of his ninety-five theses and further in his sermon on “Indulgences and Grace” (February 1518), the sermon on “Penitence” (March 1518), and the sermon on the “Sacrament of Penance” (1519), he set forth this meaning of repentance or conversion and developed the glorious thought that the most important part of penitence consists not in private confession (which cannot be found in Scripture) nor in satisfaction (for God forgives sins freely) but in true sorrow over sin, in a solemn resolve to bear the cross of Christ, in a new life, and in the word of absolution, that is, the word of the grace of God in Christ. The penitent arrives at forgiveness of sins, not by making amends (satisfaction) and priestly absolution, but by trusting the word of God, by believing in God’s grace. It is not the sacrament but faith that justifies. In that way Luther came to again put sin and grace in the center of the Christian doctrine of salvation. The forgiveness of sins, that is, justification, does not depend on repentance, which always remains incomplete, but rests in God’s promise and becomes ours by faith alone.”
― Herman Bavinck

“Try not to leave your work for someone else to do. If possible, carry the work of someone and add it to yours. That's a trait of leaders!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts

“Most times, the leader’s ornament isn’t the smiles you see on their faces during the time of victory. It is the sweats we don’t see when they were struggling behind the scenes.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts

“Would people be excited about your departure from the earth or they would wish you should come back again and again if possible?”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts

“The leader’s joy is the success of change, the evidence of progress and the actualization of a better life.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts

“A leader’s meal is that unstoppable desire to stay late to see his dreams achieved. They never give up.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts

“Martin Luther was the Reformation’s indispensable firestarter. Would there have been a Reformation if young Martin had followed his father’s wishes and become a lawyer? Who knows, but the Reformation as it actually happened is unimaginable without him.”
― Alec Ryrie, Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World

“Luther was horrified. Partly this was because, for all his spiritual radicalism, he was deeply socially conservative. His instinct was to obey rightful authorities, to respect social hierarchies, and to preserve good order. For him, Christian freedom meant inner liberation, not political upheaval.”
― Alec Ryrie, Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World

“...The Turk is the rod of the wrath of the Lord our God...

...resisting the Turks, whom he presented as a scourge intentionally sent by God to sinning Christians, and that resisting it would have been equivalent to resisting the will of God...”
― Martin Luther

“The indignation and rage of the small merchant against the monopolies was given eloquent expression byLutherin his pamphlet “On Trading and Usury,” printed in 1524. “They have all commodities under their control and practice without concealment all the tricks that have been mentioned; they raise and lower prices as they please and oppress and ruin all the small merchants, as the pike the little fish in the water, just as though they were lords over God’s creatures and free from all the laws of faith and love".”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“I therefore hold the legendary Jesus in no way responsible for the trouble: it began withLuther,perhaps, and went on withWesley;but no matter! — what I am trying to get at is the religion which makes England to-day a hell for any man who cares at all for freedom. That religion they call Christianity; the devil they honour they call God. I accept these definitions, as a poet must do, if he is to be at all intelligible to his age, and it is their God and their religion that I hate and will destroy.”
― Aleister Crowley, The World's Tragedy

“When natural music is heightened and polished by art there man first beholds and can with great wonder examine to a certain extent, (for it cannot be wholly
seized or understood) the great and perfect wisdom of God in His marvellous work of music, in which this is most singular and indeed astonishing, that one man sings a simple tune or tenor (as musicians call it), together with which three, four or five voices also sing, which as it were play and skip delightedly round this simple tune or tenor, and wonderfully grace and adorn the said tune with manifold devices and sounds, performing as it were a heavenly dance, so that those who at all understand it and are moved by it must be greatly amazed, and believe that there is
nothing more extraordinary in the world than such a song adorned with many voices.”
― Martin Luther

“Wo aber sogar das Studium und die künstlerische Musik hin­zutreten, die die natürliche verbessern, sorgfältig bearbeiten und ausführen, wird es endlich möglich, die vollkommene und vollendete Weisheit Gottes in seinem wunderbaren Werk der Musik zu spüren, aber nicht voll zu erfassen. Daraus ragt beson­ders hervor, dass eine Stimme gesungen wird und, wäh­rend diese Hauptmelodie fortgeführt wird, viele Stimmen rings­um wunderbar scherzen, frohlocken und mit sehr erfreuenden Ausdrücken sie verzieren und so neben ihr gleichsam einen göttlichen Reigen ausführen, so dass denen, die wenigstens mäßig dafür empfänglich sind, nichts Wunderbareres in dieser Welt zu geben scheint.”
― Martin Luther

“When natural music is heightened and polished by art, there man first beholds and can with great wonder examine to a certain extent (for it cannot be wholly seized or understood) the great and perfect wisdom of God in His marvellous work of music. In which this is most singular and indeed astonishing: that one man sings a simple tune or tenor (as musicians call it), together with which three, four, or five voices also sing, which, as it were, play and skip delightedly round this simple tune or tenor, and wonderfully grace and adorn the said tune with manifold devices and sounds, performing as it were a heavenly dance, so that those who at all understand it and are moved by it must be greatly amazed and believe that there is nothing more extraordinary in the world than such a song adorned with many voices.”
― Martin Luther

“The leader’s commandment is made up of pledges to solve local and global problems, and not to create more problems to add to the existing ones.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts

“Who can understand this? Philosophy is unequal to it. Only faith can grasp so high a mystery. This is the foolishness of the cross which is hid from the wise and prudent. Reason must retire. She cannot understand that" God hides his power in weakness, his wisdom in folly, his goodness in severity, his justice in sins, his mercy in anger. "
How amazing that God in Christ should do all this; that the Most High, the Most Holy should
be All Loving too; that the ineffable Majesty should stoop to take upon himself our flesh, subject to hunger and cold, death and desperation. We see him lying in the feedbag of a donkey, laboring in a carpenter's shop, dying a derelict under the sins of the world. The gospel is not so much a miracle as a marvel, and every line is suffused with wonder.”
― Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther

“The scene lends itself to a dramatic portrayal. Here was Charles, heir of a long line of Catholic sovereigns--of Maximilian the romantic, of Ferdinand the Catholic, of Isabella the orthodox--scion of the house of Hapsburg, lord of Austria, Burgundy, the Low Countries, Spain, and Naples, Holy Roman Emperor, ruling over a vaster domain than any save Charlemagne, symbol of the medieval unities, incarnation of a glorious if vanishing heritage; and here before him stood a simple monk, a miner's son, with nothing to sustain him save his own faith in the Word of God. Here the past and the future were met. Some would see at this point the beginning of modern times. The contrast is real enough. Luther himself was sensible of it in a measure. He was well aware that he had not been reared as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, but what overpowered him was not as much that he stood in the presence of the emperor as this, that he and the emperor alike were called upon to answer before Almighty God.”
― Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther

“The compulsive quest for certainty,as we find withLuther,is not the expression of genuine faith but is rooted in the need to conquer the unbearable doubt.Luther's solution is one which we find present in many individuals today, who do not think in theological terms: namely to find certainty by elimination of the isolated individual self, by becoming an instrument in the hands of an overwhelmingly strong power outside of the individual. For Luther this power was God and in unqualified submission he sought certainty. But although he thus succeeded in silencing his doubts to some extent, they never really disappeared; up to his last day he had attacks of doubt which he had to conquer by renewed efforts toward submission.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“Luther'spersonality as well as his teachings shows ambivalence toward authority. On the one hand he is overawed by authority—that of a worldly authority and that of a tyrannical God—and on the other hand he rebels against authority—that of the Church. He shows the same ambivalence in his attitude toward the masses. As far as they rebel within the limits he has set he is with them. But when they attack the authorities he approves of, an intense hatred and contempt for the masses comes to the fore. […] we shall show that this simultaneous love for authority and the hatred against those who are powerless are typical traits of the "authoritarian character.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“…one main point inLuther'steachings was his emphasis on the evilness of human nature, the uselessness of his will and of his efforts.Calvinplaced the same emphasis on the wickedness of man and put in the center of his whole system the idea that man must humiliate his self-pride to the utmost; and furthermore, that the purpose of man’s life is exclusively God's glory and nothing of his own. Thus Luther and Calvin psychologically prepared man for the role which he had to assume in modern society: of feeling his own self to be insignificant and of being ready to subordinate his life exclusively for purposes which were not his own. Once man was ready to become nothing but the means for the glory of a God who represented neither justice nor love, he was sufficiently prepared to accept the role of a servant to the economic machine—and eventually a “Führer.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“Martin Luther was a friar as well as a professor. When a man in his position accused the church of moneygrubbing, people were ready to listen.”
― Alec Ryrie, Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World

“The psychological significance of the doctrine of predestination is a twofold one. It expresses and enhances the feeling of individual powerlessness and insignificance. No doctrine could express more strongly than this the worthlessness of human will and effort. The decision over man's fate is taken completely out of his own hands and there is nothing man can do to change this decision. He is a powerless tool in God's hands. The other meaning of this doctrine, like that ofLuther's,consists in its function to silence the irrational doubt which was the same inCalvinand his followers as in Luther. At first glance the doctrine of predestination seems to enhance the doubt rather than silence it. Must not the individual be torn by even more torturing doubts than before to learn that he was predestined either to eternal damnation or to salvation before he was born? How can he ever be sure what his lot will be? Although Calvin did not teach that there was any concrete proof of such certainty, he and his followers actually had the conviction that they belonged to the chosen ones. They got this conviction by the same mechanism of self-humiliation which we have analyzed with regard to Luther's doctrine. Having such conviction, the doctrine of predestination implied utmost certainty; one could not do anything which would endanger the state of salvation, since one's salvation did not depend on one's own actions but was decided upon before one was ever born. Again, as with Luther, the fundamental doubt resulted in the quest for absolute certainty, but though the doctrine of predestination gave such certainty, the doubt remained in the background and had to be silenced again and again by an ever-growing fanatic belief that the religious community to which one belonged represented that part of mankind which had been chosen by God.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“ButLutherdid more than bring out the feeling of insignificance which already pervaded the social classes to whom he preached—he offered them a solution. By not only accepting his own insignificance but by humiliating himself to the utmost, by giving up on every vestige of individual will, by renouncing and denouncing his individual strength, the individual could hope to be acceptable to God. Luther's relationship to God was one of complete submission. In psychological terms his concept of faith means: if you completely submit, if you accept your individual insignificance, then the all-powerful God may be willing to love you and save you. If you get rid of your individual self with all its shortcomings and doubts by utmost self-effacement, you free yourself from the feeling of your own nothingness and can participate in God's glory. Thus, while Luther freed people from the authority of the Church, he made them submit to a much more tyrannical authority, that of a God who insisted on complete submission of man and annihilation of the individual self as the essential condition to his salvation.Luther's "faith" was the conviction of being loved upon the condition of surrender,a solution which has much in common with the principle of complete submission of the individual to the state and the "leader.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“The church is a whore, but she's my mother”
― Tony Campolo rephrasing Cyprian and misattributed to St. Augustine

“For it is established by God's Word that God does not lie, nor does His word lie.”
― Martin Luther