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 NIEBUHRReason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.
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The chief source of man’s inhumanity to man seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to other men.
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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.
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All known existence points beyond itself.
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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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We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
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Religion, declares the modern man, is consciousness of our highest social values. Nothing could be further from the truth. True religion is a profound uneasiness about our highest social values.
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History is a realm in which human freedom and natural necessity are curiously intermingled.
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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.
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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 fanatic is dangerous.
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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 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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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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A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR