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This 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.

Reinhold Niebuhr

No nation can say, ‘We will capitulate to tyranny rather than accept a speculative fate – to accept an absolute fate in alternative to a speculative one’ – no nation can do that.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Accepting Alternatives Fate
A dogma which was intended to guarantee the economic freedom of the individual became the “ideology” of vast corporate structures of a later period of capitalism, used by them, and still used, to prevent a proper political control of their power.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Capitalism Dogma Economic Freedom Guarantee
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Accomplished Accomplishment Love
We judge the Russians because they’re living under despotism and we don’t like it, but we’ve gotten into a fix now where we’re living in a common predicament, and we ought to recognize this common predicament.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Common Judging Predicaments
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Age Dishonest Facts Men
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Race Sports Understanding
I’m not afraid of too many things, and I got that invincible kind of attitude from my father.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Attitude Father Kind
Freedom is necessary for two reasons. It’s necessary for the individual, because the individual, no matter how good the society is, every individual has hopes, fears, ambitions, creative urges, that transcend the purposes of his society.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Ambition Art Society Two
Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves and who do not probe deeply.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Done Evil Good People
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

May Realizing Tragedy
All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Humans Intention Sin
You can’t say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Answers Giving Nuclear
Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Confusion Political Relative Value
Whether the man is an atheist or a Christian, I would judge him by his fruits, and I have therefore many agnostic friends.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Atheist Christian Men
I think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Clubs Thinking Together
Adam Smith’s was a real universalism in intent. Laissez Faire was intended to establish a world community as well as a natural harmony of interests within each nation… But the “children of darkness” were able to make good use of his creed.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Children Community Real

This 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.

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This 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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