The chief source of man’s inhumanity to man seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to other men.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRMarxism is the modern form of Jewish prophecy.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.
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I’m not afraid of too many things, and I got that invincible kind of attitude from my father.
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We ought to really at least recognize the common predicament of Communists and democrats – or Americans, whatever.
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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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That’s much more dangerous than when people don’t believe anything; they may be confused, they may not have a sense of the meaning of life, but they’re not dangerous.
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Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.
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If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.
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Liberalism and Marxism share a common illusion of the “children of light.” Neither understands property as a form of power which can be used in either its individual or its social form as an instrument of particular interest against the general interest.
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Great talents have some admirers, but few friends.
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That’s why history is not an answer to our problem, because history complicates, enlarges every problem of human existence. Now, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries didn’t believe this.
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Cheese, wine, and a friend must be old to be good.
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Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
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The essence of man is his freedom. Sin is committed in that freedom. Sin can therefore not be attributed to a defect in his essence. It can only be understood as a self-contradiction, made possible by the fact of his freedom but not following necessarily from it.
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To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
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I think I have one answer, that is partly religious and partly secular; and that is to say, we ought to at least recognize that we and the Russians are in a common predicament. That would be religious in the sense, “Judge not lest you be judged.”
REINHOLD NIEBUHR