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 NIEBUHRI 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.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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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.
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…(I)ndividual selfhood is expressed in the self’s capacity for self-transcendence and not in its rational capacity for conceptual and analytic procedures.
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Justice 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.
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Marxism is the modern form of Jewish prophecy.
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All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.
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The cross symbolizes a cosmic as well as historic truth. Love conquers the world, but its victory is not an easy one.
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The pretensions of final truth are always partlyan effort to obscure a darkly felt consciousness of the limits of human knowledge.
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Civilization depends upon the vigorous pursuit of the highest values by people who are intelligent enough to know that their values are qualified by their interests and corrupted by their prejudices.
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The more complex the world situation becomes, the more scientific and rational analysis you have to have, the less you can do with simple good will and sentiment.
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Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life’s ethical problems.
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History is a realm in which human freedom and natural necessity are curiously intermingled.
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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.
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It’s always wise to seek the truth in our opponents’ error, and the error in our own truth.
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The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
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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