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 NIEBUHRA 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.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
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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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Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
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My personal attitude toward atheists is the same attitude that I have toward Christians, and would be governed by a very orthodox text: “By their fruits shall ye know them.”
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Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
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There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion.
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Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.
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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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History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life.
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At least, nothing in the natural scene can arouse his bias. Furthermore, he stands completely outside of the natural so that his mind, whatever his limitations, approximates pure mind.
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The separation of church and state is necessary partly because if religion is good then the state shouldn’t interfere with the religious vision or with the religious prophet.
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Man 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.
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The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.
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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.
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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







