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 NIEBUHRFamily 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.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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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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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.
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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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You can’t say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.
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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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A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.
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To the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible.
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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.
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The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
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What is funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously.
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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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Marxism is the modern form of Jewish prophecy.
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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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For democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.
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God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR