Dorothee Solle Quotes

• God has no other hands than ours. If the sick are to be healed, it is our hands that will heal them. If the lonely and the frightened are to be comforted, it is our embrace, not God's, that will comfort them.

  Dorothee Solle

  God, Lonely, Healing

  53 Copy quote

• Death is what takes place within us when we look upon others not as gift, blessing, or stimulus but as threat, danger, competition.

  Dorothee Solle

  Death, Fear, Blessing

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• Really living like Christ will not mean reward, social recognition, and an assured income, but difficulties, discrimination, solitude, anxiety. Here, too, the basic experience of the cross applies: the wider we open our hearts to others, the more audibly we intervene against the injustice that rules over us, the more difficult our lives in the rich unjust society will become.

  Dorothee Solle

  Heart, Mean, Unjust Society

  Dorothee Sölle (1990). “Thinking about God: an introduction to theology”, Trinity Pr Intl

  35 Copy quote

• With the disappearance of God the Ego moves forward to become the sole divinity.

  Dorothee Solle

  Moving, Ego, Divinity

  51 Copy quote

• If my hands are fully occupied in holding on to something, I can neither give nor receive.

  Dorothee Solle

  Hands, Giving, Holding On

  Dorothee Sölle (1984). “The Strength of the Weak: Toward a Christian Feminist Identity”, p.33, Westminster John Knox Press

  28 Copy quote

• Religion does not confirm that there are hungry people in the world; it interprets the hungry to be our brethren whom we allow to starve.

  Dorothee Solle

  People, Justice, Diversity

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• Bible texts are best read with a pair of glasses made out of today's newspaper.

  Dorothee Solle

  Bible, Glasses, Today

  Dorothee Sölle (1984). “The Strength of the Weak: Toward a Christian Feminist Identity”, p.155, Westminster John Knox Press

  32 Copy quote

• toleration of exploitation, oppression, and injustice points to a condition lying like a pall over the whole of society; it is apathy, an unconcern that is incapable of suffering.

  Dorothee Solle

  Lying, Suffering, Apathy

  Dorothee Sölle (1975). “Suffering”, Fortress Press

  36 Copy quote

• What is important is not what someone is but what he is waiting for. Not the events of life but its possibilities.

  Dorothee Solle

  Waiting, Important, Events

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• The more people anticipate the elimination of suffering the less strength they have actually to oppose it. Whoever deals with his personal suffering only in the way our society has taught him - through illusion, minimization, suppression, apathy - will deal with societal suffering in the same way.

  Dorothee Solle

  People, Suffering, Apathy

  Dorothee Sölle (1975). “Suffering”, Fortress Press

  34 Copy quote

• Every acceptance of suffering is an acceptance of that which exists. The denial of every form of suffering can result in a flight from reality in which contact with reality becomes ever thinner, ever more fragmentary. It is impossible to remove oneself totally from suffering, unless one removes oneself from life itself, no longer enters into relationships, makes oneself invulnerable.

  Dorothee Solle

  Acceptance, Reality, Suffering

  Dorothee Sölle (1975). “Suffering”, Fortress Press

  19 Copy quote

• For me as a woman pride is not really sin, but rather something that I still have to learn. The male conception of the person who rebels against God by affirming himself, by acting proudly, arrogantly, and without constraints, is not a woman's concern. Rather, we women are in danger of not developing any pride, of never becoming independent, of constantly remaining within too narrow boundaries.

  Dorothee Solle

  Independent, Pride, Acting

  Dorothee Sölle (1990). “Thinking about God: an introduction to theology”, Trinity Pr Intl

  28 Copy quote

• To be content with the world as it is is to be dead.

  Dorothee Solle

  World, Complacency

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• All fundamentalist theologians make the ordinances of creation an essential part of creation and absolutize them. Women belong at home, fulfil their life through motherhood, by caring for their husbands and serving them. The fixed role pattern of one particular economic and family order is transformed into an order willed by God and given by creation. With a methodologically similar logic, slaves were understood as those elected by God to serve the whites.

  Dorothee Solle

  Husband, Home, Caring

  9 Copy quote

• God has no other hands than ours.

  Dorothee Solle

  Hands

  Dorothee Sölle (1975). “Suffering”, Fortress Press

  9 Copy quote

• A language that takes our emotions seriously and gives them real weight in our lives encourages us to think and be and act differently.

  Dorothee Solle

  Real, Thinking, Giving

  Dorothee Sölle (1984). “The Strength of the Weak: Toward a Christian Feminist Identity”, p.84, Westminster John Knox Press

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• This is the purpose of theology. By it my life becomes clearer and more conscious.

  Dorothee Solle

  Purpose, Conscious, Theology

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• A competitive society is a society of envy.

  Dorothee Solle

  Envy, Competition

  Dorothee Sölle (1983). “The arms race kills even without war”, Augsburg Fortress Publishers

  7 Copy quote

• There is no wrong suffering. There is imaginary, sham, feigned, simulated, pretended suffering. But the assertion that someone suffers for the right or wrong reason presupposes a divine, all-penetrating judgment able to distinguish historically obsolete forms of suffering from those in our time, instead of leaving this decision to the sufferers themselves.

  Dorothee Solle

  Decision, Leaving, Suffering

  Dorothee Sölle (1975). “Suffering”, Fortress Press

  15 Copy quote

• Our whole life consists of despairing of an answer and seeking an answer.

  Dorothee Solle

  Answers, Whole Life, Whole

  9 Copy quote

• Religion is made up of unrestrained wishes.

  Dorothee Solle

  Wish, Made

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• To take sides with life and experience how we can transcend ourselves is a process that has many names and faces. Religion is one of those names.

  Dorothee Solle

  Names, Faces, Sides

  9 Copy quote

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