I know that the Communists are atheistic and godless, but I don’t think that that’s what’s primarily the matter with them. What’s primarily the matter with them is that they worship a false god.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRMarxism is the modern form of Jewish prophecy.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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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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All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.
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Great talents have some admirers, but few friends.
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To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
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The history of mankind is a perennial tragedy; for the highest ideals which the individual may project are ideals which he can never realize in social and collective terms.
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We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
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Therefore 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.
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We ought to really at least recognize the common predicament of Communists and democrats – or Americans, whatever.
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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.
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All this talk about atheistic materialism and God-fearing American I think is beside the point; it’s a rather vapid form of religion.
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History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life.
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All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.
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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.
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It is the evil in man that makes democracy necessary, and man’s belief in justice that makes democracy possible.
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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.
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The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
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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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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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Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.
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The 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.
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Justice requires that we carefully weigh rights and privileges and assure that each member of a community receives his due share. Love does not weigh rights and privileges too carefully because it prompts each to bear the burden of the other.
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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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Politics deals with a common-sense approach to the imponderables of history, that I think are obscured by a certain kind of rationalism.
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Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
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The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.
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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