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 NIEBUHRThe 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.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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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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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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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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Certainly, anybody who says, “in the eyes of God,” is pretentious.
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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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The old prose writers wrote as if they were speaking to an audience; while, among us, prose is invariably written for the eye alone.
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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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You can’t say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.
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Liberalism and Marxism share a common illusion of the “children of light.” Neither understands property as a form of power which can be used in either its individual or its social form as an instrument of particular interest against the general interest.
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The history of mankind is a perennial tragedy; for the highest ideals which the individual may project are ideals which he can never realize in social and collective terms.
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If you equate God’s judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.
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Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.
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If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.
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We Protestants ought to humbly confess that the theater and the sports have done more for race amity, for race understanding than, on the whole, the Protestant Church in certain type, in certain parts of the nation.
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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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR







