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

Reinhold Niebuhr

…(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
If you equate God’s judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Judgment Religion Wrong
The fanatic is dangerous.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Dangerous Fanatics Life People
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Analysis Simple World
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
Adam Smith’s was a real universalism in intent. Laissez Faire was intended to establish a world community as well as a natural harmony of interests within each nation… But the “children of darkness” were able to make good use of his creed.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Children Community Real
All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Coercion Cooperation Groups
We ought to really at least recognize the common predicament of Communists and democrats – or Americans, whatever.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Common Communist Predicaments
Our dreams of bringing the whole of human history under the control of the human will are ironically refuted by the fact that no group of idealists can easily move the pattern of history toward the desired goal of peace and justice.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Drama Dream Moving
Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

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

Goodness Love Power
It is the evil in man that makes democracy necessary, and man’s belief in justice that makes democracy possible.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Evil Justice Men
What is funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Happiness Joy Laughter
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
The old prose writers wrote as if they were speaking to an audience; while, among us, prose is invariably written for the eye alone.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Audience Eye Style
Man is endowed by nature with organic relations to his fellow men; and natural impulse prompts him to consider the needs of others even when they compete with his own.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Fellow Impulse Men Needs

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

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

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