The churches that are most obviously democratic are most obviously given to race prejudice. I mean the churches that have absolute congregational control.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRThe 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.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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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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The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.
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The fanatic is dangerous.
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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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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.
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There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion.
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Every experience proves that the real problem of our existence lies in the fact that we ought to love one another, but do not.
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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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Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
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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.
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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.
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There must be equality of all men before God and in a democratic society. Now that’s one of the great achievements.
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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.
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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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All known existence points beyond itself.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR