- Closing Title Card: ...the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. -George Eliot
- Lorenz Schwaninger: [Talking to his daughter Fani, who is also Franz Jägerstätter's wife, about Franz's imprisonment and the resultant mistreatment that the family is facing] Better to suffer injustice than to do it.
- Ohlendorf - The Painter: What we do, is just create - sympathy. We create-- we create admirers. We don't create followers. Christ's life is a demand. You don't want to be reminded of it. So we don't have to see what happens to the truth. A darker time is coming - when men will be more clever. They won't fight the truth, they'll just ignore it. I paint their comfortable Christ, with a halo over his head. How can I show what I haven't lived? Someday I might have the courage to venture, not yet. Someday I'll - I'll paint the true Christ.
- Captain Herder: There's a difference between the kind of suffering we can't avoid and a suffering we choose.
- Franz Jägerstätter: I don't know everything. A man may do wrong, and he can't get out of it to make his life clear. Maybe he'd like to go back, but he can't. But I have this feeling inside me, that I can't do what I believe is wrong.
- Judge Lueben: Do you have a right to do this?
- Franz Jägerstätter: Do I have a right not to?
- Waldland: I wish I'd had a wife. And a farm. And apple trees and a cherry tree. And - maybe some grapes. We should do our own wine: white wine and red wine. When red wine for the winter and white wine for the summer. We would not drink too much. We would pray and work, but sometimes - sometimes a little drink is good. Sometimes, we would go to church. And sometimes not. Sometimes, we stay at home and we make music.
- Fr. Fürthauer: Does a man have the right to let himself be put to death for the truth? Could it possibly please God? He wants us to have peace, happiness. Not to bring suffering on ourselves.
- Mayor Kraus: This is what happens when a world dies. Men survive. But their life is gone. Their life is gone! Their reason for living.
- Franz Jägerstätter: They seem to have more freedom, and to know more of peace and happiness, though they are only unreasoning animals, than we humans do. We who have the gift of understanding.
- [first lines]
- Franz Jägerstätter: [narrating] I thought that we could build our nest high up, in the trees. Fly away, like birds - to the mountains.
- Captain Herder: We all have blood on our hands. No one is innocent. Crying, bloodshed, everywhere. He who created this world. He created evil. Conscious makes cowards of us all. Take care, my friend. The Antichrist is clever. He uses a man's virtues to mislead him.
- Fr. Fürthauer: There's not much time! God doesn't care what you say. Only what's in your heart. Say the oath, and think what you like.
- Franz Jägerstätter: If God gives us free will, we're responsible for what we do, what we fail to do, aren't we? If our leaders are not good, if they're evil, what does one do? I want to save my life, but not through lies.
- Title Card: During World War II, every Austrian soldier called up for active duty was required to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler.
- Franz Jägerstätter: When you give up the idea of surviving at any price, a new light floods in. Once, you were in a rush, always short of time. Now you have all you need. Once, you never forgave anyone. Judged people without mercy. Now you see your own weakness, so you can understand the weakness of others.
- Fani Jägerstätter: Time will come when we will know what all this is for. And there will be no mysteries. We will know... why... we live. We'll come together. We'll plant orchards, fields. We'll build the land back up. Franz, I'll meet you there - in the mountains.
- Fani Jägerstätter: Remember the day when we first met?
- Franz Jägerstätter: You were shy like now.
- Fani Jägerstätter: I remember that motorcycle. My best dress. You looked at me, and I knew. How simple life was then. It seemed no trouble could reach our valley. We lived above the clouds.
- Ohlendorf - The Painter: I paint the tombs of the prophets. I help people look up from those pews and dream. They look up and they imagine if they lived back in Christ time they wouldn't have done what the others did. They wouldn't have murdered those whom we now adore. I paint all this suffering, but, I don't suffer myself. I make a living of it.
- Franz Jägerstätter: You - my shepherd. You make me lie down in green pastures, by the river of life. You - my strength. You show me the path. You - our light. Darkness is not dark to you. Bring us to your eternal light, to you - the true, the never-failing light.
- Captain Herder: What good do you think your defiance is doing anyone? You think it will change the course of things? You think the authorities are aware of you? That your protest will come to their attention? You think anyone will know of it? Ever hear you? No one knows what goes on behind these walls. No one. What purpose does it serve?
- Franz Jägerstätter: Does it make no difference whether this war is just or unjust?
- Fani Jägerstätter: The new hay gives me hope. The scent in the barn. The wind. The wheat. The sky. He won't send us more than we can bear.
- Judge Lueben: Do you imagine that anything you do will change the course of this war? That anyone outside this court will ever hear of you? No one will be changed. The world will go on as before. Your actions may even have the opposite effect of what you intend. Someone else will take your place.
- Lawyer Feldman: See here, I am going to leave this paper with you. Keep it with you. Sign, and you will go free.
- Franz Jägerstätter: But I am free.
- Lawyer Feldman: So, why am I here?
- Franz Jägerstätter: I don't know?
- Bishop Fliesser: We must be strong. Stand firm. Learn the lesson of the blacksmith. No matter how hard a hammer strikes the anvil cannot, need not, strike back. The anvil outlives the hammer. That which is hammered on the anvil, takes his form, not only from the hammer, but the anvil too.
- Captain Herder: Are you better than the rest? Are you alone wise? How do you know what is good or bad? You know better than I? Did heaven tell you this?
- Bishop Fliesser: You have a duty to the Fatherland. The Church tells you so. Do you know the words of the Apostle? That every man be subject to the power that's placed over him.
- Captain Herder: You've forgotten what the world looks like. The light. The sky. I didn't make this world the way it is. And neither did you.
- Fani Jägerstätter: Fear overcomes me. I know it should not. Trust in the triumph of the good. No evil can happen to a good man. No despair will foster earth. But he knows it.
- Franz Jägerstätter: Will I be required to swear loyalty to Hitler?
- Lawyer Feldman: Words. No one really takes that sort of thing seriously.
- Franz Jägerstätter: I can't.
- prisoner: You know, even if it rains, the sun is shining. The sun shines on good and evil the same