Great talents have some admirers, but few friends.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRWhether the man is an atheist or a Christian, I would judge him by his fruits, and I have therefore many agnostic friends.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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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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Aim for the stars and maybe you’ll reach the sky.
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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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I think I have one answer, that is partly religious and partly secular; and that is to say, we ought to at least recognize that we and the Russians are in a common predicament. That would be religious in the sense, “Judge not lest you be judged.”
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That’s why history is not an answer to our problem, because history complicates, enlarges every problem of human existence. Now, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries didn’t believe this.
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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 be religious is not to feel, but to be.
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In 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.
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I’m not afraid of too many things, and I got that invincible kind of attitude from my father.
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A 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.
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All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.
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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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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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You can’t say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.
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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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR