We have before us the fiendishness of business competition and the world war, passion and wrongdoing, antagonism between classes and moral depravity within them, economic tyranny above and the slave spirit below.
Karl BarthRead
When we speak of our virtues we are competitors, when we confess our sins we become brothers.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Discussing virtues breeds competition, while confessing faults fosters brotherhood.
This quote by Karl Barth highlights the contrast between boasting about one's virtues, which can lead to comparisons and rivalry among individuals, versus admitting one's weaknesses or sins, which encourages humility and a sense of unity among people. Such confessions can create bonds of empathy and understanding, suggesting that shared vulnerabilities can lay the foundation for true camaraderie.
Themes
VirtuesSinsBrotherhoodHumilityCompetition
In practice
Example use cases
In a team-building workshop, this quote can be shared to encourage openness and vulnerability among team members.
More from Karl Barth
All quotes βConscience is the perfect interpreter of life.
Karl BarthRead
That the zeal for God's honor is also a dangerous passion, that the Christian must bring with him the courage to swim against the tide instead of with it... accept a good deal of loneliness, will perhaps be nowhere so clear and palpable as in the church, where he would so much like things to be different. Yet he cannot and he will not refuse to take this risk and pay this price... he belongs where the reformation of the church is underway or will again be underway.
Karl BarthRead
In the Church of Jesus Christ there can and should be no non-theologians.
Karl BarthRead
Christian worship is the most momentous, most urgent, most glorious action that can take place in human life.
Karl BarthRead
Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone.
Karl BarthRead
Similar quotes
There's a very simple reason for focusing on the nuclear issue. Many, many issues are of supreme importance in one way or another, but if we blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons, no other issue is really going to matter. Quite possibly there would be no other human beings left to be concerned about anything else.
Alan CranstonRead
But in the expression of the countenance, which was beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible anomalyl) that fitful strain of melancholy which will ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful.
Edgar Allan PoeRead
A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this - that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made - not to understand - but to feel - as crime.
Edgar Allan PoeRead
Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity.
Immanuel KantRead
But the fact a person denies that he is theorising is no reason for taking him at his word and failing to investigate what implicit theory is involved in his statements.
Talcott ParsonsRead
The first question here, then, is not "What is best for my soul?" nor is it even "What is most useful to humanity?" But-transcending both these limited aims-what function must this life fulfill in the great and secret economy of God?
Evelyn UnderhillRead