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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

We ought to really at least recognize the common predicament of Communists and democrats – or Americans, whatever.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Common Communist Predicaments
The fanatic is dangerous.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Dangerous Fanatics Life People
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
[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
The separation of church and state is necessary partly because if religion is good then the state shouldn’t interfere with the religious vision or with the religious prophet.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Country Giving People Religious
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Dignity Men Misery
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Achievement Good Life Philosophy
All this talk about atheistic materialism and God-fearing American I think is beside the point; it’s a rather vapid form of religion.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Materialism Thinking Vapid
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Children Liberalism Social Understand
There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Cures Pride Religion
The prophet himself stands under the judgment which he preaches. If he does not know that, he is a false prophet.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Judgment Prophet
Certainly, anybody who says, “in the eyes of God,” is pretentious.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Anybody Eye Pretentious
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
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Communist Guarantees Victory
The churches that are most obviously democratic are most obviously given to race prejudice. I mean the churches that have absolute congregational control.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Church Congregational Mean Race
The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Justice Politics World

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.”

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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.”

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Popular Authors

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