The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRWhat is funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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For democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.
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Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life’s ethical problems.
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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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For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
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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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The essence of man is his freedom. Sin is committed in that freedom. Sin can therefore not be attributed to a defect in his essence. It can only be understood as a self-contradiction, made possible by the fact of his freedom but not following necessarily from it.
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The more complex the world situation becomes, the more scientific and rational analysis you have to have, the less you can do with simple good will and sentiment.
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We have, on the whole, more liberty and less equality than Russia has. Russia has less liberty and more equality. Whether democracy should be defined primarily in terms of liberty or equality is a source of unending debate.
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Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.
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To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
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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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[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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Therefore we have a long history of freedom, where people try to extricate themselves from tyranny for the sake of art, for the sake of science, for the sake of religion, for the sake of the conscience of the individual – this freedom is necessary for the individual.
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A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.
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At least, nothing in the natural scene can arouse his bias. Furthermore, he stands completely outside of the natural so that his mind, whatever his limitations, approximates pure mind.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR