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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.

Reinhold Niebuhr

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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Conscience History People Sake Themselves Tyranny
If we can find God only as he is revealed in nature we have no moral God.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

God Moral Revealed
The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Achievement Moving Wisdom
I think there is and ultimate answer in a true religious faith, but it doesn’t give you any immediate answers, it doesn’t.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Giving Religious Thinking
Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Accomplished Life Lifetime Single
[There is] an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groups.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Group Men Vices
Religion, declares the modern man, is consciousness of our highest social values. Nothing could be further from the truth. True religion is a profound uneasiness about our highest social values.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Men Profound Social Values
The old prose writers wrote as if they were speaking to an audience; while, among us, prose is invariably written for the eye alone.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Audience Eye Style
The nuclear age has refuted the idea of progress and Marxism has been refuted by Stalinism. Therefore people have returned to the historic religion.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Age Ideas People
That is the truth about man – that he has a curious kind of dignity, but also a curious kind of misery, and that these forms of agnosticism don’t understand.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Dignity Men Misery
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Accomplished Accomplishment Love
Politics deals with a common-sense approach to the imponderables of history, that I think are obscured by a certain kind of rationalism.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Common Kind Sense Thinking
We have to risk a nuclear war in order to escape capitulation to Communism. For all I know, we may stumble into this terrible war.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Communism Order Risk War
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

May Realizing Tragedy
In the 17th and 18th centuries there was a kind of Protestantism that said, “If you could only get rid of the Bishop, then you’d be a true Christian”.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Bishops Christian Kind
I think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Clubs Thinking Together

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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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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