Quotes from Karl Barth

The Word ought to be exposed in the words

If I ever get to heaven, I would first of all seek out Mozart, and only then inquire after Augustine, St. Thomas, Luther, Calvin, and Schleiermacher.

Dogmatics is the testing of Church doctrine and proclamation

The righteousness of God in His election means, then, that as a righteous Judge God perceives and estimates as such the lost cause of the creature, and that in spite of its opposition He gives sentence in its favour, fashioning for it His own righteousness.

Everyone who must contend with unbelief should be advised that he ought not to take his own unbelief too seriously. Only faith is to be taken seriously; and if we have faith as a grain of mustard seed, that suffices for the devil to have lost his game.

God does not have to dishonor himself, when he goes into the far country and conceals his glory.

the older and younger Blumhardt and their friends. There would have been something significant to learn—as later developments prove—from the books of Friedrich Zündel, for example.

But—we must ask today—why then did no one listen to Overbeck?

But be warned! The book is an inconceivably impressive sharpening of the commandment 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain'.

For it is a dangerous book, a book filled with the apocalyptic air of judgement.

the irreconcilable antitheses of death and life, the world and the kingdom of heaven, and then again to see them both as one, before he can evaluate the concealed power of this unique spirit. For 'this was a man and to be a man means to be a fighter'.

No one can come back and start over, but everybody can move forward and decide the ending.