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Whether the man is an atheist or a Christian, I would judge him by his fruits, and I have therefore many agnostic friends.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Accomplishment Lifetime Success
I think there is and ultimate answer in a true religious faith, but it doesn’t give you any immediate answers, it doesn’t.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Giving Religious Thinking
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Capitalism Dogma Economic Freedom Guarantee
There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Cures Pride Religion
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
That’s much more dangerous than when people don’t believe anything; they may be confused, they may not have a sense of the meaning of life, but they’re not dangerous.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Dangerous Life Meaning More Much
We have to risk a nuclear war in order to escape capitulation to Communism. For all I know, we may stumble into this terrible war.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Communism Order Risk War
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
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Men Profound Social Values
A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Democracy Justice Republic
To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Feels Religious
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Beautiful Complete Good Saved
I’ve long ago felt, I have many Jewish friends and I very I think creative Jewish friends, and I’ve long felt that the average Christian didn’t realize the tremendous capacity for civic righteousness among our Jewish people.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Average Christian Thinking
The development of a managerial class in Russia, combing economic with political power, is an historic refutation of the Marxist theory.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Comb Marxist Theory
[There is] an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groups.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Group Men Vices
Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves and who do not probe deeply.
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Done Evil Good People
If we can find God only as he is revealed in nature we have no moral God.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

God Moral Revealed
…(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 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
Politics deals with a common-sense approach to the imponderables of history, that I think are obscured by a certain kind of rationalism.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Common Kind Sense Thinking
If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Courage Steel Survival
The significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all law.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Law Love Significance
Marxism is the modern form of Jewish prophecy.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Form Modern
This insinuation of the interests of the self into even the most ideal enterprises and most universal objectives, envisaged in moments of highest rationality, makes hypocrisy an inevitable by product of all virtuous endeavor.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Hypocrisy Moments Self
Cheese, wine, and a friend must be old to be good.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Cheese Good Wine
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Answers Believe Problem
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

Whether the man is an atheist or a Christian, I would judge him by his fruits, and I have therefore many agnostic friends.

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Whether the man is an atheist or a Christian, I would judge him by his fruits, and I have therefore many agnostic friends.

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