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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRWe judge the Russians because they’re living under despotism and we don’t like it, but we’ve gotten into a fix now where we’re living in a common predicament, and we ought to recognize this common predicament.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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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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A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.
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Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life’s ethical problems.
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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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We ought to really at least recognize the common predicament of Communists and democrats – or Americans, whatever.
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The fanatic is dangerous.
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All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.
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Cheese, wine, and a friend must be old to be good.
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Adam Smith’s was a real universalism in intent. Laissez Faire was intended to establish a world community as well as a natural harmony of interests within each nation… But the “children of darkness” were able to make good use of his creed.
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The churches that are most obviously democratic are most obviously given to race prejudice. I mean the churches that have absolute congregational control.
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Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.
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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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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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The Jews were the money-lenders of the Middle Ages so there’s a stereotype of the slightly or more than slightly dishonest business man and this stereotype covers and obscures all the facts.
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The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.
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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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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.
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God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
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For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
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If you equate God’s judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.
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What is funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously.
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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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Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
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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 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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You can’t say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.
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