What is funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRI 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.”
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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If you equate God’s judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.
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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.
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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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You can’t say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.
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Cheese, wine, and a friend must be old to be good.
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[There is] an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groups.
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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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Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
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All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.
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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.
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It is significant that it is as difficult to get charity out of piety as to get reasonableness out 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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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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All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.
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All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR