[There is] an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groups.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRTo the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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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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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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Certainly, anybody who says, “in the eyes of God,” is pretentious.
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Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life’s ethical problems.
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The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
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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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All this talk about atheistic materialism and God-fearing American I think is beside the point; it’s a rather vapid form of religion.
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Every experience proves that the real problem of our existence lies in the fact that we ought to love one another, but do not.
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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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To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
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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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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.
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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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Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
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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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR