To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRTo be religious is not to feel, but to be.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRThe chief source of man’s inhumanity to man seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to other men.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRAt 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 NIEBUHRWe 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 NIEBUHRThe churches that are most obviously democratic are most obviously given to race prejudice. I mean the churches that have absolute congregational control.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRWhat is funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRThe 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 NIEBUHRHistory is a realm in which human freedom and natural necessity are curiously intermingled.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRJustice 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 NIEBUHRI think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRReligion, 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 NIEBUHRPolitics deals with a common-sense approach to the imponderables of history, that I think are obscured by a certain kind of rationalism.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRThat’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 NIEBUHRWe misjudge anybody who’s different from us and the Jews diverge from our type, ethnically and religiously. That’s their chief offense, but there are particular causes.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRI think there is and ultimate answer in a true religious faith, but it doesn’t give you any immediate answers, it doesn’t.
REINHOLD NIEBUHRThe final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR