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There are evidently limits to the achievements of science; and there are irresolvable contradictions both between prosperity and virtue, and between happiness and ”the good life,” which had not been anticipated in our philosophy.

Reinhold Niebuhr

For democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Democracy Method Problem
A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Democracy Justice Republic
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
At 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 NIEBUHR

Approximately Complete Leat Mind
Politics deals with a common-sense approach to the imponderables of history, that I think are obscured by a certain kind of rationalism.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Common Kind Sense Thinking
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Capitalism Dogma Economic Freedom Guarantee
Marxism is the modern form of Jewish prophecy.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Form Modern
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
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Beautiful Complete Good Saved
Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Goodness Love Power
If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Courage Steel Survival
Liberalism and Marxism share a common illusion of the “children of light.” Neither understands property as a form of power which can be used in either its individual or its social form as an instrument of particular interest against the general interest.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Children Liberalism Social Understand
I 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 NIEBUHR

Clubs Thinking Together
To the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Effort Order Social
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
[There is] an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groups.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Group Men Vices
Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Age Bound Leaps Reaction

There are evidently limits to the achievements of science; and there are irresolvable contradictions both between prosperity and virtue, and between happiness and ”the good life,” which had not been anticipated in our philosophy.

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There are evidently limits to the achievements of science; and there are irresolvable contradictions both between prosperity and virtue, and between happiness and ”the good life,” which had not been anticipated in our philosophy.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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