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We have previously suggested that philanthropy combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice.

Reinhold Niebuhr

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
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Accepting Alternatives Fate
That’s why history is not an answer to our problem, because history complicates, enlarges every problem of human existence. Now, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries didn’t believe this.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Answers Believe Problem
The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Justice Politics World
To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Feels Religious
Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Age Bound Leaps Reaction
We 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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Country Democracy Liberty People
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 significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all law.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Law Love Significance
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Civilization Intelligent People Quality
There was a time when I had all the answers. My real growth began when I discovered that the questions to which I had the answers were not the important questions.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Growth Important Real
What is funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Happiness Joy Laughter
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Achievement Good Life Philosophy
There must be equality of all men before God and in a democratic society. Now that’s one of the great achievements.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Achievement Democratic Men
A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Democracy Justice Republic
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

We have previously suggested that philanthropy combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice.

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We have previously suggested that philanthropy combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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