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 NIEBUHRWhether the man is an atheist or a Christian, I would judge him by his fruits, and I have therefore many agnostic friends.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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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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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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Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
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If we can find God only as he is revealed in nature we have no moral God.
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There are evidently limits to the achievements of science; and there are irresolvable contradictions both between prosperity and virtue, and between happiness and ”the good life,” which had not been anticipated in our philosophy.
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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 old prose writers wrote as if they were speaking to an audience; while, among us, prose is invariably written for the eye alone.
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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.
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A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architec75tural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections.
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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.
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God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
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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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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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There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion.
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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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All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.
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That is the truth about man – that he has a curious kind of dignity, but also a curious kind of misery, and that these forms of agnosticism don’t understand.
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The pretensions of final truth are always partlyan effort to obscure a darkly felt consciousness of the limits of human knowledge.
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If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.
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Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.
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The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
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Certainly, anybody who says, “in the eyes of God,” is pretentious.
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To the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible.
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The prophet himself stands under the judgment which he preaches. If he does not know that, he is a false prophet.
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The Communists do have a god, the Dialectic of History, which guarantees everything that they’re going to do and guarantees them victory; that’s why they’re fanatic.
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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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR