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It’s always wise to seek the truth in our opponents’ error, and the error in our own truth.

Reinhold Niebuhr

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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Inhumanity Limit Man Measure
For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
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Desire Historical Men
There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion.
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Cures Pride Religion
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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Church Congregational Mean Race
A dogma which was intended to guarantee the economic freedom of the individual became the “ideology” of vast corporate structures of a later period of capitalism, used by them, and still used, to prevent a proper political control of their power.
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Capitalism Dogma Economic Freedom Guarantee
It’s always wise to seek the truth in our opponents’ error, and the error in our own truth.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Errors Opponents Wise
Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.
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Confusion Political Relative Value
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.
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Communism Order Risk War
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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Done Evil Good People
The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.
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Historical Persistance Reckoning
The development of a managerial class in Russia, combing economic with political power, is an historic refutation of the Marxist theory.
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Comb Marxist Theory
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Race Sports Understanding
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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Common Kind Sense Thinking
Aim for the stars and maybe you’ll reach the sky.
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Government Sky Stars
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
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Accomplishment Lifetime Success
To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
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Feels Religious
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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Causes Different Type
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.
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Civilization Intelligent People Quality
The 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.
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Age Dishonest Facts Men
The measure of our rationality determines the degree of vividness with which we appreciate the needs of other life, the extent to which we become conscious of the real character of our own motives and impulses.
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Character Mean Real
Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life’s ethical problems.
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Men Problem Way
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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Change Prayer Wisdom
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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Country House Majesty People
There are evidently limits to the achievements of science; and there are irresolvable contradictions both between prosperity and virtue, and between happiness and ”the good life,” which had not been anticipated in our philosophy.
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Achievement Good Life Philosophy
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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May Realizing Tragedy
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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Conquer Historic Victory World
For democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Democracy Method Problem

It’s always wise to seek the truth in our opponents’ error, and the error in our own truth.

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It’s always wise to seek the truth in our opponents’ error, and the error in our own truth.

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