Quotessence
Home / Topics / Martin Luther Quotes

Martin Luther Quotes

Browse 137 quotes about Martin Luther.

Martin Luther Quotes

“Bear it in mind that people who do not take actions are not and cannot be leaders. Leadership is action.”

PeopleActionLeadershipWorkMovementHard WorkFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorLeadersActionsIdleWork HardMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingMake A MoveLeadership Is Action
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“The essence of adversity is to show us the real brave people who can withstand it.”

SuccessLeadershipEssenceBraveryAdversityFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorLeadersMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingCowardsDangersBad DaysSad NewsBad EventsBrave PeopleBad WeathersSuccessful Strong
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“Everyone appears to be courageous until bad weathers arrive, and then we know the true leaders.”

StrongLeadershipLeaderCourageDangerBraveryAdversityBraveFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorDisasterCowardLeadersCowardiceBoldnessBoldMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingBad WeatherBe BoldCowardsTrue LeadersBad DaysSad NewsBad EventsBad Weathers
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“People who run away from challenges are cowards and no coward deserves a reward.”

ChallengesLeadershipBraveryBraveFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorCowardLeadersCowardiceWinBoldnessRewardBoldRunMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingWinnersResultAwardTrophyRun Away Challenge
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“People who boast about age are actually forgetting something special. Age is not barrier to or elevator to success; that’s the job of vision.”

AgeSuccessLeadershipForgetVisionSuccessfulFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorLeadersJobBoastVisionsMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingElevatorBarrier
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“The most difficult step ever is the first step. It comes with doubts, uncertainties, and all sort of fears. If you defy all odd and take it, your confidence will replicate very fast and you'll become a master!”

FearDifficultLeadershipDoubtConfidenceFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorUncertaintyOddLeadersMasteryBoldnessMasterMoveBoldMartin Luther King JrFirstMartin LutherMartin Luther KingReplicateStepMake A MoveBe BoldDoubleFirst StepDefyMultiplyUncertaintiesDefy Odds
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“The rise or fall, success or failure of your dreams is largely dependent on the association you build yourself around.”

DreamSuccessFallFriendshipLeadershipRelationshipDreamsFailureFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorDependentCompanionLeadersAssociationAssociatesCompanionshipSuccess And FailureRiseBig DreamsDependencyMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingRise And FallCompanionsDependYou Can RisePeople Friends
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“I trust that you are aware that today’s success is tomorrow’s mediocrity. This means anything appealing today will be appalling tomorrow.”

TodaySuccessLeadershipSuccessfulTomorrowInnovationFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorLeadersMediocrityMediocreRelevanceMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingInnovateAppealAppealingAppallingAppallToday S ExcellenceTomorrow S Mediocrity
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“Every talent God has hidden in you is not for your own consumption; they are for other people’s liberation.”

EnjoyLeadershipLibertyTalentFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorLiberationEnjoymentLeadersConsumptionGiftsBeneficialMartin Luther King JrAbilitiesMartin LutherMartin Luther KingBenefitConsumeNatural Abilities
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“The height of your success will be measured with reference to the depth from which you started.”

SuccessLeadershipSuccessfulAchieveHigherWeightImpactDepthFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorHeightLengthTallLeadersMeasurementHighStartBreadthAchievementsMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingShortReferenceMeasureRefer
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“You don’t need a huge number of people with little passions to get a good job done. You rather need few people with huge passion.”

PassionLeadershipHugeFood For ThoughtPassionateIsraelmore AyivorTinyLeadersSmallLittleMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingFewNumberMinorityMany PeopleMinorFew PeopleHuge NumberHuge Passion
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“What it takes is the passion to lead and the commitment to that passion through a lifetime. A great number isn’t bad though, but doesn’t take numbers to change the world.”

WorldPassionChangeLeadershipNumbersCommitmentLifetimeFood For ThoughtPassionateCommittedIsraelmore AyivorCommitLeadersChange The WorldMartin Luther King JrCrowdMartin LutherMartin Luther KingNumberMultitudeMany PeopleFew PeopleGreat Numbers
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“If you are an aspiring leader and you have not yet gone through any trouble, prepare for one. It is by going through the hard times that you become harder against the storms of life.”

LifeHardLeadershipLeaderTroubleFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorPreparationHard TimesLeadersAspireBoldnessStormsBoldMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingPrepareLead PeopleBe BoldLifestylesTrouble WatersAspiring Leader
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“True leaders are willing to die for their dreams. They don't oppress with ignorance; they impress with visions". They live like Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela...”

DreamDiesPassionLeadershipFreedomQualityLeaderVisionDreamsExcellenceFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorImpressionOppressionLiveLeadersFollowersImpressDream BigGovernanceImpressiveLeadVisionaryVisionsMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherExtra MileTrue LeadersNelson MandelaOppressorOppressiveOpressImpressor
Author:Israelmore Ayivor
Create image

“Keep to active learning. You must learn, research and be so passionate about new ways and methods of doing things to be and remain relevant.”

IdeasSuccessPassionLeadershipSuccessfulResearchInnovationFood For ThoughtPassionateIsraelmore AyivorLeadersLearnInnovativeIdeaMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingInnovateInnovative IdeasActive LearningMethodsLearn New ThingsLearn Hard
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“The same styles you used earlier may become monotonous over time. You want to remain relevant, so you got to change that style.”

IdeasSuccessTimePassionLeadershipSuccessfulResearchInnovationFood For ThoughtPassionateIsraelmore AyivorLeadersLearnNew WaysInnovativeIdeaNewOldMonotonousMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingOld WaysInnovateNew SkillsInnovative IdeasActive LearningMethodsTime ChangesLearn New ThingsLearn HardOld SkillsChange Your StyleNew KeysNew StylesOld KeysOld Styles
Author:Israelmore Ayivor
Create image

“The same styles you used earlier may become monotonous over time. You want to remain relevant, so you got to change that style. Reinvent yourself always: You must create a new you”

IdeasSuccessTimePassionLeadershipSuccessfulResearchInnovationFood For ThoughtPassionateIsraelmore AyivorLeadersLearnNew WaysInnovativeIdeaNewOldMonotonousMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingOld WaysInnovateNew SkillsInnovative IdeasActive LearningMethodsTime ChangesLearn New ThingsLearn HardOld SkillsChange Your StyleNew KeysNew StylesOld KeysOld Styles
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“If you are going to hide yourself and you will not stand against the work of the bad people, you have given them an endorsement.”

TruthLeadershipWorkJusticeLibertyFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorLeadersBadBad PeopleToxic PeopleMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingLiberateEndorsementEndorse
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“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.”

JesusJesus ChristLutherGospelMartin LutherLutheranism
Book:Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther
Create image

“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.”

FaithCourageLutherMartin LutherParadigm ShiftLutheranismHoly Roman Empire
Book:Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther
Create image

“God once spoke through the mouth of an ass. I will tell you straight what I think. I am a Christian theologian and I am bound not only to assert, but to defend the truth with my blood and death. I want to believe freely and be a slave to the authority of no one, of a council, a university, or pope. I will confidently confess what appears to me to be true whether it has been asserted by a Catholic or a heretic, whether it has been approved or reproved by a council.”

ChristianityReformationMartin LutherLutheranismLutheranOrthodox Lutheranism
Author:Martin Luther
Create image

“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 of Luther's, consists in its function to silence the irrational doubt which was the same in Calvin and 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.”

Martin LutherPredestinationCalvinismLutheranism1941Protestant ReformationSola Fide
Book:Escape from Freedom
Create image

“But Luther did 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.”

SurrenderMartin LutherPredestinationLutheranism1941Protestant ReformationSola Fide
Book:Escape from Freedom
Create image

“Nothing is more unfounded than to see a “world historical action” in Luther’s theses against indulgences and to date the beginning of the Reformation from them. The Anti-Roman movement had been in existence for decades in all classes of the German nation, and the fight against the abuses of the church had already found literary expression, for instance in the writings of the humanists. They were much more scathing than the rather tame theses of Luther. who did not even blame the indulgences themselves, but only their “abuses.”

LutherMartin LutherLutheranismProtestant Reformation
Book:Die Lessing-Legende
Create image

“Don’t complain of terrible circumstances. It has been proven several times that they are the sources of celebrated trophies.”

LeadershipCircumstancesTerribleFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorComplainingCelebrateLeadersTrophiesMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingCircumstanceComplaintTrophySeveralComplainsSeveral TimesCelebrated Trophies
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“The strongest storms make the best sailors. The strongest games make the best players. Tougher challenges make the best leaders.”

PlayGamesStrongChallengesLeadershipStruggleFootballHard WorkToughStrongerStriveFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorStrongestLeadersSailChallengeWork HardSailorGameStrugglesMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingPlayersSailorsTougherToughestBest Player
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“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.”

LeadershipLeaderFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorLeadersProblemsGlobalizationCreatePledgeGlobalMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingLocalCommandmentPledges
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“The indignation and rage of the small merchant against the monopolies was given eloquent expression by Luther in 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".”

MonopolyMartin LutherUsury19411524
Book:Escape from Freedom
Create image

“Sometimes the only things preventing your dreams from becoming realities is the long time it is taking you to start.”

LeadershipDreamsFood For ThoughtIsraelmore AyivorLeadersProcrastinationDelayDream BigStartBig DreamsMartin Luther King JrMartin LutherMartin Luther KingStart NowKick StartBegin Now
Book:Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Create image

“From the outset, Protestantism rejected the critical medieval distinction between the 'sacred' and 'secular' orders. While this position can easily be interpreted as a claim for the desacralization of the sacred, it can equally well be understood as a claim for the sacralization of the secular. As early as 1520, Luther had laid the fundamental conceptual foundations for created sacred space within the secular. His doctrine of the 'priesthood of all believers' asserted that there is no genuine difference of status between the 'spiritual' and the 'temporal' order. All Christians are called to be priests - and can exercise that calling within the everyday world. The idea of 'calling' was fundamentally redefined: no longer was it about being called to serve God by leaving the world; it was now about serving God in the world.”

WorkChristianitySacredCatholicismSecularVocationMartin LutherProtestantismPriesthood Of All Believers
Book:Christianity's Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution: A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First
Create image

“The apostle Paul often appears in Christian thought as the one chiefly responsible for the de-Judaization of the gospel and even for the transmutation of the person of Jesus from a rabbi in the Jewish sense to a divine being in the Greek sense. Such an interpretation of Paul became almost canonical in certain schools of biblical criticism during the nineteenth century, especially that of Ferdinand Christian Baur, who saw the controversy between Paul and Peter as a conflict between the party of Peter, with its 'Judaizing' distortion of the gospel into a new law, and the party of Paul, with its universal vision of the gospel as a message about Jesus for all humanity. Very often, of course, this description of the opposition between Peter and Paul and between law and gospel was cast in the language of the opposition between Roman Catholicism (which traced its succession to Peter as the first pope) and Protestantism (which arose from Luther's interpretation of the epistles of Paul). Luther's favorite among those epistles, the letter to the Romans, became the charter for this supposed declaration of independence from Judaism.”

LawChristianityTheologyDoctrinePeterJudaismGospelMartin LutherPaulRoman CatholicismBook Of Romans
Book:Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture
Create image