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Martin Luther Quotes (1483-1546)
Theologian
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About Martin Luther
Martin Luther (10 November 1483 ā 18 February 1546) was a German theologian, an Augustinian monk, and an ecclesiastical reformer whose teachings inspired the Reformation and deeply influenced the doctrines and culture of the Lutheran and Protestant traditions.
Best Martin Luther Quotes
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Martin Luther quotes.
āI have greater confidence in my wife and my pupils than I have in Christā
āThe veneration of Mary is inscribed in the very depths of the human heart.ā
āReligion is not 'doctrinal knowledge,' but wisdom born of personal experience.ā
āSuperstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging.ā
āI cannot forbid a person to marry several wives, for it does not contradict Scripture.ā
Martin Luther Quotes by Topic
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Martin Luther on United States 19 quotes
āI must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard, and what is it America has failed to hear?ā
Martin Luther on Love 9 quotes
āThere can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.ā
Martin Luther on Christianity 8 quotes
āBe a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ.ā
Martin Luther on Catholic Church 8 quotes
āWe here are of the conviction that the papacy is the seat of the true and real Antichrist ... personally I declare that I owe the Pope no other obedience than that to Antichrist.ā
Martin Luther on Religious views on love 8 quotes
āLove is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.ā
Martin Luther on Racial segregation 6 quotes
āWhile abhorring segregation, we shall love the segregationist. This is the only way to create the beloved community.ā
Martin Luther on Freedom 5 quotes
View all 5 quotes on Freedom →Martin Luther on Justice 5 quotes
āInjustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.ā
Martin Luther on Law 5 quotes
āThe arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.ā
Martin Luther on Peace 5 quotes
āTrue peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.ā
Martin Luther on Slavery 5 quotes
āRacial segregation must be seen for what it is ā and that is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity.ā
Martin Luther on Trade unions 5 quotes
āThe labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold struggles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment insurance, old-age pensions, government relief for the destitute and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but a tolerable life. The captains of industry did not lead this transformation; they resisted it until they were overcome. When in the thirties the wave of union organization crested over the nation, it carried to secure shores not only itself but the whole society.ā
What Martin Luther Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Martin Luther shared regarding contemporaries.
Martin Luther on Mary, mother of Jesus 11 quotes
View all 11 quotes on Mary, mother of Jesus →Martin Luther on Black people 8 quotes
āIn the struggle for human rights and justice, Negros will make a mistake if they become bitter and indulge in hate campaigns.ā
Martin Luther on Jesus 3 quotes
View all 3 quotes on Jesus →Martin Luther on Abraham Lincoln 3 quotes
āFive score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.ā
Martin Luther on Henry VIII of England 2 quotes
View all 2 quotes on Henry VIII of England →Martin Luther on Martin Luther King Jr. 2 quotes
āEven if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.ā
Martin Luther on George Washington Carver 2 quotes
āFrom crippling circumstance, George Washington Carver made for himself an imperishable niche in the annals of science.ā
Martin Luther on Rosa Parks 2 quotes
āActually, no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, 'I can take it no longer.'ā
Martin Luther on Muhammad 2 quotes
āMy whole heart and soul are stirred and incensed against the Turks and Mohammed, when I see this intolerable raging of the Devil. Therefore I shall pray and cry to God, nor rest until I know that my cry is heard in heaven.ā
Martin Luther on John Bunyan 2 quotes
āThose who project total responsibility for their actions on heredity circumstances fail to see that numerous individuals rise above such circumstances. There is a John Bunyan, deprived of his physical sight, and yet he wrote a Pilgrim's Progress that generations will cherish so long as the cords of memory shall lengthen.ā
Martin Luther on Albert Lutuli 2 quotes
āI only regret that circumstances and spacial divisions have made it impossible for us to meet. But I admire your great witness and your dedication to the cause of freedom and human dignity. You have stood amid persecution, abuse, and oppression with a dignity and calmness of spirit seldom paralleled in human history. One day all of Africa will be proud of your achievements.ā
Martin Luther on Karl Barth 2 quotes
āOne of the cardinal points of Barth's doctrine of God is that He is the transcendent God. On every hand Barth is out to set God immensely above the dieties of the world, and the substitutes for God which modern philosophy and scientific research into Nature's forces have put into "modern" man's mind. ā¦ Barth makes it explicit from the beginning that God is the unknowable and indescribable God. The hidden God remains hidden. Even when we say we know him our knowledge is of an incomprehensible Reality. ā¦ Barth's contention is summed up in the dictum: Finitum non Capax infiniti, the finite has no capacity for the Infinite. ā¦ On every hand Barth speaks of time and eternity as two distinct realms, an unbridged chasm between God and man, and the unknown God.ā
Quotes About Martin Luther
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about Martin Luther from others.
Isaac Asimov on Martin Luther
āWhy, for instance, did Martin Luther succeed, whereas other important rebels against the medieval church ā like John Huss ā fail? Well, Luther was successful because printing had been developed by the time he advanced his cause. So his good earthy writings were put into pamphlets and spread so far and wide that the church officials couldn't have stopped the Protestant Reformation even if they had burned Luther at the stake.ā
Robert Boyle on Martin Luther
āThe wish of Luther, that all his books of devotion were burnt, raises him greatly in my opinion; because he discovered, that the immoderate esteem and veneration attatched to them, caused the Scriptures to be neglected.ā
William Godwin on Martin Luther
āIt is particularly proper to introduce some mention of Luther in this place; not that he is in any way implicated in the question of necromancy, but that there are passages in his writings in which he talks of the devil in what we should now think a very extraordinary way. And it is curious, and not a little instructive, to see how a person of so masculine an intellect, and who in many respects so far outran the illumination of his age, was accustomed to judge respecting the intercourse of mortals with the inhabitants of the infernal world. Luther was born in the year 1483. It appears from his Treatise on the Abuses attendant on Private Masses, that he had a conference with the devil on the subject. He says, that this supernatural personage caused him by his visits "many bitter nights and much restless and wearisome repose." Once in particular he came to Luther, "in the dead of the night, when he was just awaked out of sleep. The devil," he goes on to say, "knows well how to construct his arguments, and to urge them with the skill of a master. He delivers himself with a grave, and yet a shrill voice. Nor does he use circumlocutions, and beat about the bush, but excels in forcible statements and quick rejoinders. I no longer wonder," he adds, "that the persons whom he assails in this way, are occasionally found dead in their beds. He is able to compress and throttle, and more than once he has so assaulted me and driven my soul into a corner, that I felt as if the next moment it must leave my body. I am of opinion that Gesner and Oecolampadius and others in that manner came by their deaths. The devil's manner of opening a debate is pleasant enough; but he urges things so peremptorily, that the respondent in a short time knows not how to acquit himself." He elsewhere says, "The reasons why the sacramentarians understood so little of the Scriptures, is that they do not encounter the true opponent, that is, the devil, who presently drives one up in a corner, and thus makes one perceive the just interpretation. For my part I am thoroughly acquainted with him, and have eaten a bushel of salt with him. He sleeps with me more frequently, and lies nearer to me in bed, than my own wife does."ā
Soren Kierkegaard in his life and literature on Martin Luther
āLuther remains master of direct presentation of the truth, Kierkegaard, peer of Christian āindirect impartationā by a Socratic pedagogy. They are two complementary types of mind. In the growing complex, subtle, ratiocinate trend of modern life the bold simplicity of Luther's manly directness needs Kierkegaard's invincible ādouble-reflectivityā and keen appreciation of the refined intricacies of mind and life as a healthful corrective. Times change and we Christians must change with them in all things somewhat, except in the faith that saves.ā
Jae Jerkins on Martin Luther 3 quotes
āThe deceit of Muhammad was a fundamental concern for Luther as he feared that a false prophet might tempt Protestant Christians to falterāmuch as the practice of indulgences had done for Catholics. For a modern man like Luther, the antidote for such deceit was knowledge. The Protestant Reformation was founded on the principle that any Christian could pick up a Bible in the vernacular and make sense of it for him or herself. In like manner, Luther promoted the study of the Qurāan so that Christians would be prepared should they ever have a direct encounter with Islam. Three works illustrate this hermeneutic: his foreword to the Tract on the Religion and Customs of the Turk (1530); his introduction to the German translation of Ricoldoās Confutatio al-Koran' (1542); and the preface to the Swiss publication of the Qurāan (1543).ā
Heinrich Heine on Martin Luther
āFrom the day on which Luther denied the authority of the Pope, and publicly declared in the Diet "that his teachings must be controverted through the words of the Bible itself, or with sensible reasons," there begins a new era in Germany. The fetters with which Saint Boniface had chained the German Church to Rome are broken. This Church, which has hitherto formed an integral part of the great hierarchy, now splits into religious democracies. The character of the religion itself is essentially changed: the Hindoo-Gnostic element disappears from it, and the Judaic-theistic element again becomes prominent. We behold the rise of evangelical Christianity. By recognising and legitimising the most importunate claims of the senses, religion becomes once more a reality. The priest becomes man, takes to himself a wife, and begets children, as God desires.ā
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn on Martin Luther
āHe was possessed of a more Slavic than Germanic grudge against Latin clarity and legalism; the meticulous adherence to the iron laws of logic, dry and well-weighted argumentation of a gradual and conclusive nature were alien to him. His whole appearance reminds one rather of a Prussian N.C. officer or of a Slovakian butcher, than of a West German intellectual. His bulging eyes and unkempt hair; his fat neck and bellowing voice; his inordinate love for food, drink, and sex; his coarse speech and eruptive nature are characteristic of certain low-class East Europeans. When he says: "I do not admit that my doctrine can be judged by anyone, not by the angels," one could almost imagine hearing Hitler speak.ā
Luther on Martin Luther
āNo. 4638: Luther Rejects the Copernican Cosmology June 4, 1539 There was mention of a certain new astrologer who wanted to prove that the earth moves and not the sky, the sun, and the moon. This would be as if somebody were riding on a cart or in a ship and imagined that he was standing still while the earth and the trees were moving. [Luther remarked,] āSo it goes now. Whoever wants to be clever must agree with nothing that others esteem. He must do something of his own. This is what that fellow does who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down. Even in these things that are thrown into disorder I believe the Holy Scriptures, for Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and not the earth [Josh. 10:12].āā
H. L. Mencken "Treatise on the Gods" on Martin Luther
āProtestantism itself, in its early phases, was plainly a movement toward mysticism: its purpose, at least in theory, was to remove the priestly veil separating man from the revealed Word of God. But that veil was restored almost instantly, and by the year 1522, five years after Wittenberg, Luther was damning the Anabaptists with all the ferocious certainty of a medieval Pope, and his followers were docily accepting his teaching.ā
Brother Soft-life on Martin Luther
āBruder Sanftleben und Vater Leisentret ... meinet, er wollte gerne seine fĆ¼rgenommene LĆ¼ste alle ins Werk fĆ¼hren, seine Pracht und ReichtĆ¼mer behalten und gleichwohl einen bewƤhrten Glauben haben, welches doch der Sohn Gottes mit klaren Worten den Schriftgelehrten getadelt hat (Joh. am 5.), da er spricht: Ā»Wie ist's mƶglich, daĆ ihr kƶnnet glauben, wenn ihr eure Ehre sucht?Ā«ā
Francesco Saverio Nitti on Martin Luther
āThe poverty-stricken rural population rose up against their despoilers; they burnt down the castles of the nobles, and swore that they would leave nothing to be seen upon the land but the cabins of the poor. The rich middle-class seemed at first to side with them, and at Strasburg, Nuremberg, and Ulm the peasants were encouraged, aided, and provided for. However, the bourgeoisie soon grew alarmed at the spreading of the insurrection, and made common cause with the nobles in smothering the revolt in the rural districts. Luther, who was then at the apex of his power, condemned the rising in the name of religion, and proclaimed the servitude of the people as holy and legitimate. "You seek," wrote he, "to free your persons and your goods. You desire the power and the goods of this earth. You will suffer no wrong. The Gospel, on the contrary, has no care for such things, and makes exterior life consist in suffering, supporting injustice, the cross, patience, and contempt of life, as of all the things of this world. To suffer! To suffer! The cross! The cross! Behold what Christ teaches!" Were not these teachings, given in the name of the faith to a famishing people in revolt against the tyranny and avidity of the ruling aristocracy, fatal to the future of the peasant masses, whose very sufferings were thus legitimised in the name of the religion that should have come to their aid?ā
Rictor Norton on Martin Luther
āLuther defined the Devil as a giant anus, and in much iconography we see Evil and Sin personified by farting, shitting, and sodomy. There is no satisfactory explanation for this anal phobia, though no doubt it had something to do with what we now call the "anal-retentive" personality of authoritarian types.ā
Disputed Quotes
Quotes attributed to Martin Luther that are questionable.
āHier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders.
• Translation: Here I stand; I can do no other.ā
• Translation: Here I stand; I can do no other.ā
āIād rather be ruled by a competent Turk than an incompetent Christian.ā
About Martin Luther
Martin Luther (10 November 1483 ā 18 February 1546) was a German theologian, an Augustinian monk, and an ecclesiastical reformer whose teachings inspired the Reformation and deeply influenced the doctrines and culture of the Lutheran and Protestant traditions.