It is the evil in man that makes democracy necessary, and man’s belief in justice that makes democracy possible.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRWe have, on the whole, more liberty and less equality than Russia has. Russia has less liberty and more equality. Whether democracy should be defined primarily in terms of liberty or equality is a source of unending debate.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.
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Great talents have some admirers, but few friends.
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If we can find God only as he is revealed in nature we have no moral God.
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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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A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.
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Politics deals with a common-sense approach to the imponderables of history, that I think are obscured by a certain kind of rationalism.
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A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.
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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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Aim for the stars and maybe you’ll reach the sky.
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We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
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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.
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For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
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To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
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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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR







