The Cross and Success

In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things the fugure of him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity. The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success. It is not ideas or opinions which decide, but deeds. Success alone justifies wrongs done... With a frankness and off-handedness which no other earthly power could permit itself, history appeals in its own cause to the dictum that the end justifies the means... The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics; quoted in Mextaxas, Bonhoeffer, 363)