Attributed to Bonhoeffer on the Internet, and supposedly from Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy http://books.google.com/books?id=aG0q3X8TVpsC&pg=PA486#v=onepage (2010) by Eric Metaxas; however, there is no actual reference in that book. However, in advertising the book Metaxas does state on his site that the quote is from Bonhoeffer. http://ericmetaxas.com/books/bonhoeffer-pastor-martyr-prophet-spy/ First attributed to Bonhoeffer in Explorations 12:1 (1998), p. 3, as referenced by James Cone (2004) Theology's Great Sin: Silence in the Face of White Supremacy, Black Theology, 2:2, 139-152, footnote 1 http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/blth.2.2.139.36027
Compare "Not to Act, is to Act!" by Francis W. McPeek http://www.ergo-sum.net/pics/McPeek.jpg, The Missionary Herald at Home and Abroad, v.141-142 (1945-1946), "Missionary herald, 1945 - Congregational churches," pp.34-35 (We must realize that church inaction is a form of political action, and it is altogether negative. “Not to act, is to act.”)
Misattributed
“To remain silent in the face of evil is itself a form of evil.”
Source: The Invention of Wings
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Sue Monk Kidd 100
Novelist 1948Related quotes
Source: Metaphysics: Concept and Problems
“Fear of evil is greater than the evil itself.”
Sono maggiori li spaventi ch'e mali.
Act III, scene xi
The Mandrake (1524)
“Marriage, if one will face the truth, is an evil, but a necessary evil.”
Unidentified fragment 651.
The Sayings of the Wise (1555)
“Evil resides in the very gaze which perceives Evil all around itself.”
“Of what use to destroy the children of evil? It is evil itself we must destroy at the roots.”
Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1922)