The stupidity of the average man will permit the oligarch, whether economic or political, to hide his real purposes from the scrutiny of his fellows and to withdraw his activities from effective control.
REINHOLD NIEBUHREvery experience proves that the real problem of our existence lies in the fact that we ought to love one another, but do not.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
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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 human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.
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Civilization depends upon the vigorous pursuit of the highest values by people who are intelligent enough to know that their values are qualified by their interests and corrupted by their prejudices.
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The fanatic is dangerous.
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Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
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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 pretensions of final truth are always partlyan effort to obscure a darkly felt consciousness of the limits of human knowledge.
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Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.
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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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[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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Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves and who do not probe deeply.
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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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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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That is one of the flagrant misconceptions about Catholicism in America that if a man is a Catholic he owes allegiance to what they say a foreign sovereign, or something like that.
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Humour is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer … Laughter is swallowed up in prayer and humour is fulfilled by faith.
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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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To the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible.
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Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.
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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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Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
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Man 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.
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In the 17th and 18th centuries there was a kind of Protestantism that said, “If you could only get rid of the Bishop, then you’d be a true Christian”.
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For democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.
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We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR