Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRIn 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.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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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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The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
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Aim for the stars and maybe you’ll reach the sky.
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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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Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.
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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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Freedom is necessary for two reasons. It’s necessary for the individual, because the individual, no matter how good the society is, every individual has hopes, fears, ambitions, creative urges, that transcend the purposes of his society.
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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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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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For democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.
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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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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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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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The prophet himself stands under the judgment which he preaches. If he does not know that, he is a false prophet.
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Marxism is the modern form of Jewish prophecy.
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All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.
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It is the evil in man that makes democracy necessary, and man’s belief in justice that makes democracy possible.
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We misjudge anybody who’s different from us and the Jews diverge from our type, ethnically and religiously. That’s their chief offense, but there are particular causes.
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That’s much more dangerous than when people don’t believe anything; they may be confused, they may not have a sense of the meaning of life, but they’re not dangerous.
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The cross symbolizes a cosmic as well as historic truth. Love conquers the world, but its victory is not an easy one.
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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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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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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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Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can only be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.
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Cheese, wine, and a friend must be old to be good.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR