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

Reinhold Niebuhr

Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Goodness Love Power
All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Coercion Cooperation Groups
A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Democracy Justice Republic
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
All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Grace Men Serenity
You can’t say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Answers Giving Nuclear
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

May Realizing Tragedy
The measure of our rationality determines the degree of vividness with which we appreciate the needs of other life, the extent to which we become conscious of the real character of our own motives and impulses.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Character Mean Real
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
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.”
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Atheist Attitude Christian
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Inspirational Life Motivational
The cross symbolizes a cosmic as well as historic truth. Love conquers the world, but its victory is not an easy one.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Conquer Historic Victory World
…(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
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 NIEBUHR

Belief Confused Thinking
All known existence points beyond itself.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Existence Known Points
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

Art Ignorance Wise

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

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

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