The Communists do have a god, the Dialectic of History, which guarantees everything that they’re going to do and guarantees them victory; that’s why they’re fanatic.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRThe Communists do have a god, the Dialectic of History, which guarantees everything that they’re going to do and guarantees them victory; that’s why they’re fanatic.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRMan 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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHROur dreams of bringing the whole of human history under the control of the human will are ironically refuted by the fact that no group of idealists can easily move the pattern of history toward the desired goal of peace and justice.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRWe 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 NIEBUHRThe nuclear age has refuted the idea of progress and Marxism has been refuted by Stalinism. Therefore people have returned to the historic religion.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRThe 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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRIn 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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRFor democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRNo 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 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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRNothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRA genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRNothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRWe 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 NIEBUHRAll human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRTherefore 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