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All known existence points beyond itself.

Reinhold Niebuhr

That is the truth about man – that he has a curious kind of dignity, but also a curious kind of misery, and that these forms of agnosticism don’t understand.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Dignity Men Misery
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
The nuclear age has refuted the idea of progress and Marxism has been refuted by Stalinism. Therefore people have returned to the historic religion.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Age Ideas People
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
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
All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Coercion Cooperation Groups
History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

History Law May
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
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 sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Justice Politics World
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
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
In the 17th and 18th centuries there was a kind of Protestantism that said, “If you could only get rid of the Bishop, then you’d be a true Christian”.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Bishops Christian Kind
The Communists do have a god, the Dialectic of History, which guarantees everything that they’re going to do and guarantees them victory; that’s why they’re fanatic.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Communist Guarantees Victory
There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Cures Pride Religion
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

All known existence points beyond itself.

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All known existence points beyond itself.

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