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“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” It is one of the most shared Dietrich Bonhoeffer quotes in the world. But there is no evidence that Bonhoeffer ever said or wrote it. The scholars who know his writings best have searched for it and cannot find it. The general editor of his complete works in English has said she is “virtually certain” it does not exist. The good news is that what Bonhoeffer really wrote about silence is stronger.
If you have shared this one, you are in very good company. Pastors have preached it. It has been printed on posters and in books. It sounds exactly like the kind of thing a man who stood up to the Nazis would say. That is a big part of why it stuck.
Did Bonhoeffer say “silence in the face of evil is itself evil”?
Here is the honest answer, stated carefully. Nobody has found these words anywhere in Bonhoeffer’s letters, sermons, books or papers. That is not the same as proving he never said them out loud once. But it is a very strong “no evidence,” and it comes from the right people.
In 2016 the writer Warren Throckmorton asked Bonhoeffer experts about it. Victoria Barnett, general editor of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works in English, told him she could not find the quote anywhere and was “virtually certain that the quote doesn’t exist.” Barry Harvey, a theology professor at Baylor University, said: “Not only do I know of no place that Bonhoeffer says this, it doesn’t sound like him at all.”
They were not the first to wonder. The historian Doris Bergen questioned the quote in print in 2013, in the book Interpreting Bonhoeffer. Erich von Dietze raised the same doubt in the Australasian Journal of Bonhoeffer Studies in 2015.
So where did the quote come from?
This is the surprising part. The quote seems to be built from pieces, and the pieces are much younger than Bonhoeffer. He was killed by the Nazis in April 1945.
The phrase “not to act is to act” shows up in the mid-1940s, in the title of an article by Francis W. McPeek in The Missionary Herald. His point was that when a church does nothing, that is still a kind of choice.
The tail of the quote appears in a 1971 book by Robert K. Hudnut called A Sensitive Man and the Christ: “Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. To do nothing when a house is burning is to do something. It is to let the house burn.”
The full version, with “silence in the face of evil” at the front and Bonhoeffer’s name attached, has been traced to 1998. It appears in Explorations, a newsletter of the American Interfaith Institute. Around the same time the words were shown in a “Heroes” exhibit at the Liberty Museum in Philadelphia.
From there it travelled. In 2010 it was printed on the back flap of a bestselling Bonhoeffer biography. After that it went everywhere: quote websites, sermon slides, social media. Each copy made the next one look more certain.
Nobody in this chain needs to be the villain. A sentence that sounds true got attached to a man whose life made it sound even truer. We see the same thing with a line often credited to Edmund Burke, which we traced in “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil”, and with the famous “preach the gospel, use words if necessary” line that has never been found in the writings of St. Francis. Big moral sentences like to find famous owners.
If you want to read the book Bonhoeffer spent years living inside, it is Matthew. His best-known book, The Cost of Discipleship (1937), is built around the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 to 7. You can read the whole Gospel of Matthew for free, as a PDF and a 28-chapter audiobook:
What Bonhoeffer actually wrote about silence
Here is the best part. You do not need the fake quote, because the real Bonhoeffer said something harder and more honest.
In April 1933, just weeks after Hitler came to power, Bonhoeffer wrote an essay called “The Church and the Jewish Question.” New laws were pushing Jewish people out of public jobs, and there was pressure to do the same inside the church. He argued that the church might have to do more than help the people crushed by the state. In one common English translation, the church’s task is “not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to put a spoke in the wheel itself.” He was 27 years old.
During the war, in the pages of his unfinished book Ethics, he wrote a confession on behalf of the church. In the English translation it says: “The church was mute when it should have cried out, because the blood of the innocent cried out to heaven.” He goes on to say the church had not raised its voice for the victims.
Notice the difference. The popular quote points outward. It is a sentence you can say about other people who stayed quiet. The real Bonhoeffer points inward. He says “the church,” which meant his own people, and in effect himself. It is not a slogan. It is a confession.
And he did more than write it. He helped train pastors in secret after the state banned his seminary. He joined the resistance. He was arrested in 1943 and executed in April 1945, only weeks before the war in Europe ended. His words about silence carry weight because of how he lived, not because of a neat line on a poster.
The older words underneath it
The idea in the fake quote is true, and it is very old. Long before Bonhoeffer, long before any of us, the book of Proverbs put it in one line:
“Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction.” (Proverbs 31:8, KJV)
“The dumb” here means people who cannot speak for themselves. It is not a warning about being guilty. It is an instruction to love someone out loud. That is the heart of what Bonhoeffer was reaching for too. It is also close to what the Bible means by righteousness, which is more about being set right with God and with our neighbour than about keeping a clean record. (Our word study on the Greek word dikaiosyne goes deeper on that.)
Why getting this right matters
This quote gets used by people on every side of every argument, usually to say “you should be speaking up about my cause.” That is part of why it spreads so fast. A sentence with a hero’s name on it wins arguments.
But Bonhoeffer is worth more than a borrowed sentence. When we give him words he did not write, we lose the words he did. And his real words are gentler with us and tougher on us at the same time. They do not ask us to point at who stayed quiet. They ask us to notice where we stayed quiet, and to own it.
So if you have this quote on a slide or a note on your phone, you do not need to feel silly. Almost everyone has seen it credited to him. Just swap it for the real one. “The church was mute when it should have cried out.” It is shorter, it is his, and it will cost you more to say.
A question for you
Which famous quote have you always believed came from a hero of the faith? Tell us in the comments. We might trace it next.
Questions and Answers
Did Dietrich Bonhoeffer say “silence in the face of evil is itself evil”?
There is no evidence that Dietrich Bonhoeffer said or wrote “silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” Bonhoeffer scholars, including Victoria Barnett, general editor of the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works in English, have searched his writings and not found it. Barnett has said she is “virtually certain” the quote does not exist in his work.
Who really said “not to speak is to speak, not to act is to act”?
The lines “not to speak is to speak, not to act is to act” appear in Robert K. Hudnut’s 1971 book A Sensitive Man and the Christ, followed by “To do nothing when a house is burning is to do something.” The phrase “not to act is to act” alone goes back at least to a mid-1940s article by Francis W. McPeek. The full quote with Bonhoeffer’s name attached has been traced to a 1998 newsletter called Explorations.
What did Bonhoeffer actually say about silence?
In his book Ethics, written during the Second World War, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a confession on behalf of the church: “The church was mute when it should have cried out, because the blood of the innocent cried out to heaven” (English translation). In 1933, in “The Church and the Jewish Question,” he argued the church should not only bandage the victims under the wheel but put a spoke in the wheel itself.
Is “silence in the face of evil is itself evil” in the Bible?
No, the sentence “silence in the face of evil is itself evil” is not in the Bible. But the idea behind it is. Proverbs 31:8 in the King James Version says, “Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction,” which means speak up for people who cannot speak for themselves.
Why is the silence quote attributed to Bonhoeffer?
The “silence in the face of evil” quote is credited to Bonhoeffer because it fits his life: he was a German pastor who resisted the Nazis and was executed in April 1945. The words were shown under his name in a late-1990s museum exhibit in Philadelphia and later printed on the back flap of a bestselling 2010 biography, and from there they spread across the internet.
Social Share Posts
I had no idea. “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil” has never been found in Bonhoeffer’s writings. What he really wrote is harder: “The church was mute when it should have cried out.”
I’ve shared that Bonhoeffer silence quote more than once. Turns out nobody can find it in his work, and the tail of it turns up in a 1971 book by someone else. His real words point at the church, not at “them.” That hit me.
Learned today the famous Bonhoeffer “not to speak is to speak” line probably isn’t his. The real Bonhoeffer is better, and it costs more to quote.
