The churches that are most obviously democratic are most obviously given to race prejudice. I mean the churches that have absolute congregational control.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRThis insinuation of the interests of the self into even the most ideal enterprises and most universal objectives, envisaged in moments of highest rationality, makes hypocrisy an inevitable by product of all virtuous endeavor.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.
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Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.
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Civilization depends upon the vigorous pursuit of the highest values by people who are intelligent enough to know that their values are qualified by their interests and corrupted by their prejudices.
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History is a realm in which human freedom and natural necessity are curiously intermingled.
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There must be equality of all men before God and in a democratic society. Now that’s one of the great achievements.
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Every experience proves that the real problem of our existence lies in the fact that we ought to love one another, but do not.
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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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God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
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Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
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Aim for the stars and maybe you’ll reach the sky.
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You can’t say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.
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We Protestants ought to humbly confess that the theater and the sports have done more for race amity, for race understanding than, on the whole, the Protestant Church in certain type, in certain parts of the nation.
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Religion, declares the modern man, is consciousness of our highest social values. Nothing could be further from the truth. True religion is a profound uneasiness about our highest social values.
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The significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all law.
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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.”
REINHOLD NIEBUHR