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A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architec75tural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections.

Reinhold Niebuhr

All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Humans Intention Sin
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
The chief source of man’s inhumanity to man seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to other men.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Inhumanity Limit Man Measure
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
Freedom is necessary for two reasons. It’s necessary for the individual, because the individual, no matter how good the society is, every individual has hopes, fears, ambitions, creative urges, that transcend the purposes of his society.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Ambition Art Society Two
It is significant that it is as difficult to get charity out of piety as to get reasonableness out of rationalism.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Charity Difficult Significant
…(I)ndividual selfhood is expressed in the self’s capacity for self-transcendence and not in its rational capacity for conceptual and analytic procedures.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Self Spirituality Transcendence
The pretensions of final truth are always partlyan effort to obscure a darkly felt consciousness of the limits of human knowledge.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Effort Finals Limits
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Causes Different Type
Certainly, anybody who says, “in the eyes of God,” is pretentious.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Anybody Eye Pretentious
We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Believe Exercise Passion
Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Accomplished Life Lifetime Single
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

Clubs Thinking Together
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
All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Grace Men Serenity
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Change Prayer Wisdom

A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architec75tural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections.

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A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architec75tural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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