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Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves and who do not probe deeply.

Reinhold Niebuhr

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
We have previously suggested that philanthropy combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Element Justice Powerful
I think there is and ultimate answer in a true religious faith, but it doesn’t give you any immediate answers, it doesn’t.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Giving Religious Thinking
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.
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Country Democracy Liberty People
Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
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Fruit Self Simple
Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life’s ethical problems.
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Men Problem Way
Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
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Reason Satisfaction Selfish
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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Hypocrisy Moments Self
If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.
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Courage Steel Survival
We Protestants ought to humbly confess that the theater and the sports have done more for race amity, for race understanding than, on the whole, the Protestant Church in certain type, in certain parts of the nation.
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Race Sports Understanding
For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
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Desire Historical Men
A dogma which was intended to guarantee the economic freedom of the individual became the “ideology” of vast corporate structures of a later period of capitalism, used by them, and still used, to prevent a proper political control of their power.
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Capitalism Dogma Economic Freedom Guarantee
All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.
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Grace Men Serenity
The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.
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Achievement Moving Wisdom
Certainly, anybody who says, “in the eyes of God,” is pretentious.
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Anybody Eye Pretentious
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

Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves and who do not probe deeply.

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Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves and who do not probe deeply.

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