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[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

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

Age Bound Leaps Reaction
You can’t say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Answers Giving Nuclear
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
Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Accomplished Life Lifetime Single
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
I know that the Communists are atheistic and godless, but I don’t think that that’s what’s primarily the matter with them. What’s primarily the matter with them is that they worship a false god.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Belief Confused Thinking
It is significant that it is as difficult to get charity out of piety as to get reasonableness out of rationalism.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Charity Difficult Significant
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
Great talents have some admirers, but few friends.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Admirer Few Friends Talent
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
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

Achievement Good Life Philosophy
There was a time when I had all the answers. My real growth began when I discovered that the questions to which I had the answers were not the important questions.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Growth Important Real
That is one of the flagrant misconceptions about Catholicism in America that if a man is a Catholic he owes allegiance to what they say a foreign sovereign, or something like that.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Catholic Country Men Misconception
We ought to really at least recognize the common predicament of Communists and democrats – or Americans, whatever.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Common Communist Predicaments
Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Goodness Love Power

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

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

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