The nuclear age has refuted the idea of progress and Marxism has been refuted by Stalinism. Therefore people have returned to the historic religion.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRMan is endowed by nature with organic relations to his fellow men; and natural impulse prompts him to consider the needs of others even when they compete with his own.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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We have previously suggested that philanthropy combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice.
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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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The prophet himself stands under the judgment which he preaches. If he does not know that, he is a false prophet.
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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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That’s much more dangerous than when people don’t believe anything; they may be confused, they may not have a sense of the meaning of life, but they’re not dangerous.
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The development of a managerial class in Russia, combing economic with political power, is an historic refutation of the Marxist theory.
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To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
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The cross symbolizes a cosmic as well as historic truth. Love conquers the world, but its victory is not an easy one.
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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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For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
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Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.
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There was a time when I had all the answers. My real growth began when I discovered that the questions to which I had the answers were not the important questions.
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I’m not afraid of too many things, and I got that invincible kind of attitude from my father.
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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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…(I)ndividual selfhood is expressed in the self’s capacity for self-transcendence and not in its rational capacity for conceptual and analytic procedures.
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I’ve long ago felt, I have many Jewish friends and I very I think creative Jewish friends, and I’ve long felt that the average Christian didn’t realize the tremendous capacity for civic righteousness among our Jewish people.
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Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.
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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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That’s why history is not an answer to our problem, because history complicates, enlarges every problem of human existence. Now, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries didn’t believe this.
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My personal attitude toward atheists is the same attitude that I have toward Christians, and would be governed by a very orthodox text: “By their fruits shall ye know them.”
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I think there is and ultimate answer in a true religious faith, but it doesn’t give you any immediate answers, it doesn’t.
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A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.
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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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Certainly, anybody who says, “in the eyes of God,” is pretentious.
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Cheese, wine, and a friend must be old to be good.
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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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR