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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.

Reinhold Niebuhr

All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Humans Intention Sin
A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Genuine Mysterious Mystery
Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
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Fruit Self Simple
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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Country House Majesty People
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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Civilization Intelligent People Quality
History is a realm in which human freedom and natural necessity are curiously intermingled.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Humans Natural Realms
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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Conscience History People Sake Themselves Tyranny
We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
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Believe Exercise Passion
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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Catholic Country Men Misconception
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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Growth Important Real
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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Law Love Significance
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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Achievement Democratic Men
This insinuation of the interests of the self into even the most ideal enterprises and most universal objectives, envisaged in moments of highest rationality, makes hypocrisy an inevitable by product of all virtuous endeavor.
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Hypocrisy Moments Self
I think I have one answer, that is partly religious and partly secular; and that is to say, we ought to at least recognize that we and the Russians are in a common predicament. That would be religious in the sense, “Judge not lest you be judged.”
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Judging Religious Thinking
…(I)ndividual selfhood is expressed in the self’s capacity for self-transcendence and not in its rational capacity for conceptual and analytic procedures.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Self Spirituality Transcendence
Every experience proves that the real problem of our existence lies in the fact that we ought to love one another, but do not.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Brotherhood Lying Real

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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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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