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That’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 Niebuhr

The churches that are most obviously democratic are most obviously given to race prejudice. I mean the churches that have absolute congregational control.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Church Congregational Mean Race
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Hypocrisy Moments Self
Whether the man is an atheist or a Christian, I would judge him by his fruits, and I have therefore many agnostic friends.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Atheist Christian Men
Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can only be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Justice Life Rights
There must be equality of all men before God and in a democratic society. Now that’s one of the great achievements.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Achievement Democratic Men
In the 17th and 18th centuries there was a kind of Protestantism that said, “If you could only get rid of the Bishop, then you’d be a true Christian”.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Bishops Christian Kind
The chief source of man’s inhumanity to man seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to other men.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Inhumanity Limit Man Measure
A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Democracy Justice Republic
Cheese, wine, and a friend must be old to be good.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Cheese Good Wine
Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Age Bound Leaps Reaction
Certainly, anybody who says, “in the eyes of God,” is pretentious.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Anybody Eye Pretentious
The prophet himself stands under the judgment which he preaches. If he does not know that, he is a false prophet.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Judgment Prophet
If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Courage Steel Survival
You can’t say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Answers Giving Nuclear
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Race Sports Understanding
That is the truth about man – that he has a curious kind of dignity, but also a curious kind of misery, and that these forms of agnosticism don’t understand.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Dignity Men Misery

That’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.

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That’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.

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Popular Authors

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