Karl Barth (Old Age), source: kbarth.org

Karl Barth is notoriously difficult to quote. Is this bad? Nein! Karl Barth won the Sigmund Freud Price in 1968 for his literary style. Barth's literary genre may not easily lend to quotations, however the following ubiquitous quotes appear again and again and attributed to Karl Barth. After scouring the internet, the following quotations are the top ten most frequently quoted online. Were these quotations ever spoken by Karl Barth or Pseudo-Karl Barth? You decide!

1. Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.

2. Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.

3. Take your Bible and your newspaper and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible.

4. To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world

5. The best theology would need no advocates; it would prove itself.

6. Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is himself the way.

7. Courage is fear that has said its prayers.

8. Preachers should have the bible in one hand and newspapers in the other

9. [To a student] I haven't even read everything I wrote.

10. When the angels sing for God, they sing Bach; when they sing for themselves, they sing Mozart and God eavesdrops