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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

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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Analysis Simple World
You can’t say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Answers Giving Nuclear
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

Hypocrisy Moments Self
The fanatic is dangerous.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Dangerous Fanatics Life People
Our dreams of bringing the whole of human history under the control of the human will are ironically refuted by the fact that no group of idealists can easily move the pattern of history toward the desired goal of peace and justice.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Drama Dream Moving
[There is] an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groups.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Group Men Vices
We have, on the whole, more liberty and less equality than Russia has. Russia has less liberty and more equality. Whether democracy should be defined primarily in terms of liberty or equality is a source of unending debate.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Country Democracy Liberty People
In the 17th and 18th centuries there was a kind of Protestantism that said, “If you could only get rid of the Bishop, then you’d be a true Christian”.
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Bishops Christian Kind
I know that the Communists are atheistic and godless, but I don’t think that that’s what’s primarily the matter with them. What’s primarily the matter with them is that they worship a false god.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Belief Confused Thinking
In the Old Testament, the God of the Prophets never was completely on Israel’s side. There was a primitive national religion, but it was always a transcendent God who had judgment first in the House of God.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Country House Majesty People
It is significant that it is as difficult to get charity out of piety as to get reasonableness out of rationalism.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Charity Difficult Significant
The chief source of man’s inhumanity to man seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to other men.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Inhumanity Limit Man Measure
…(I)ndividual selfhood is expressed in the self’s capacity for self-transcendence and not in its rational capacity for conceptual and analytic procedures.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Self Spirituality Transcendence
The development of a managerial class in Russia, combing economic with political power, is an historic refutation of the Marxist theory.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Comb Marxist Theory
The measure of our rationality determines the degree of vividness with which we appreciate the needs of other life, the extent to which we become conscious of the real character of our own motives and impulses.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Character Mean Real
For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Desire Historical Men

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

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

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