Quotes about Dilemma

Well, then, says I, what's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?

On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right? There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right.

So I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

How often have the frustrations of second-class citizenship and humiliating status led us into blind outrage against each other and the real cause and course of our dilemma been ignored?

it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

As T. S. Eliot has said: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

A man cannot serve two masters: so it is either reason or the scriptures. - On Religion

In this world, either you're virtuous or you enjoy yourself. Not both, lady, not both.

You want to do it? I might. If you offer me enough. Howard—anything you ask. Anything. I'd sell my soul... That's the sort of thing I want you to understand. To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That's what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul—would you understand why that's much harder?

It must be made quite clear—terrifying though it is—that we are immediately faced with the decision: National Socialist or Christian...

One knows what is right, but holds it at arm's length for a time, neither throwing it out, nor embracing it.

Whenever there was a dilemma, I just left it in abeyance and—without really consciously dealing with it intensively—let it grow toward the clarity of a decision. But this clarity is not so much intellectual as it is instinctive. The decision is made; whether one can adequately justify it retrospectively is another question. "Thus" it happened that I went. Bonhoeffer was always thinking about thinking.