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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.

Reinhold Niebuhr

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

Reason Satisfaction Selfish
I think I have one answer, that is partly religious and partly secular; and that is to say, we ought to at least recognize that we and the Russians are in a common predicament. That would be religious in the sense, “Judge not lest you be judged.”
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Judging Religious Thinking
[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
Certainly, anybody who says, “in the eyes of God,” is pretentious.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Anybody Eye Pretentious
The measure of our rationality determines the degree of vividness with which we appreciate the needs of other life, the extent to which we become conscious of the real character of our own motives and impulses.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Character Mean Real
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
The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Achievement Moving Wisdom
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
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
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
Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Confusion Political Relative Value
We misjudge anybody who’s different from us and the Jews diverge from our type, ethnically and religiously. That’s their chief offense, but there are particular causes.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Causes Different Type
A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Democracy Justice Republic
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Civilization Intelligent People Quality
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
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
We ought to really at least recognize the common predicament of Communists and democrats – or Americans, whatever.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Common Communist Predicaments
Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Age Bound Leaps Reaction
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Beautiful Complete Good Saved
The Communists do have a god, the Dialectic of History, which guarantees everything that they’re going to do and guarantees them victory; that’s why they’re fanatic.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Communist Guarantees Victory
Every experience proves that the real problem of our existence lies in the fact that we ought to love one another, but do not.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Brotherhood Lying Real
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
My personal attitude toward atheists is the same attitude that I have toward Christians, and would be governed by a very orthodox text: “By their fruits shall ye know them.”
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Atheist Attitude Christian
Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Accomplished Life Lifetime Single
I’ve long ago felt, I have many Jewish friends and I very I think creative Jewish friends, and I’ve long felt that the average Christian didn’t realize the tremendous capacity for civic righteousness among our Jewish people.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Average Christian Thinking
The stupidity of the average man will permit the oligarch, whether economic or political, to hide his real purposes from the scrutiny of his fellows and to withdraw his activities from effective control.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Real Running Sacrifice
God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Change Prayer Wisdom

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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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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