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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.

Reinhold Niebuhr

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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Age Dishonest Facts Men
We have, on the whole, more liberty and less equality than Russia has. Russia has less liberty and more equality. Whether democracy should be defined primarily in terms of liberty or equality is a source of unending debate.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Country Democracy Liberty People
Liberalism and Marxism share a common illusion of the “children of light.” Neither understands property as a form of power which can be used in either its individual or its social form as an instrument of particular interest against the general interest.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Children Liberalism Social Understand
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
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Approximately Complete Leat Mind
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
Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Reason Satisfaction Selfish
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
You can’t say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Answers Giving Nuclear
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
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.”
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Judging Religious Thinking
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
Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Confusion Political Relative Value
It’s always wise to seek the truth in our opponents’ error, and the error in our own truth.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Errors Opponents Wise
The churches that are most obviously democratic are most obviously given to race prejudice. I mean the churches that have absolute congregational control.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Church Congregational Mean Race
Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can only be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Justice Life Rights

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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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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Popular Authors

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