History is a realm in which human freedom and natural necessity are curiously intermingled.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRWe have previously suggested that philanthropy combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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The nuclear age has refuted the idea of progress and Marxism has been refuted by Stalinism. Therefore people have returned to the historic religion.
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Politics deals with a common-sense approach to the imponderables of history, that I think are obscured by a certain kind of rationalism.
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Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.
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We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
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The Jews were the money-lenders of the Middle Ages so there’s a stereotype of the slightly or more than slightly dishonest business man and this stereotype covers and obscures all the facts.
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Therefore we have a long history of freedom, where people try to extricate themselves from tyranny for the sake of art, for the sake of science, for the sake of religion, for the sake of the conscience of the individual – this freedom is necessary for the individual.
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The history of mankind is a perennial tragedy; for the highest ideals which the individual may project are ideals which he can never realize in social and collective terms.
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My personal attitude toward atheists is the same attitude that I have toward Christians, and would be governed by a very orthodox text: “By their fruits shall ye know them.”
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The fanatic is dangerous.
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The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.
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I think there is and ultimate answer in a true religious faith, but it doesn’t give you any immediate answers, it doesn’t.
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The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.
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What is funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously.
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The more complex the world situation becomes, the more scientific and rational analysis you have to have, the less you can do with simple good will and sentiment.
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For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR







