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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

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
A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architec75tural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Art Ignorance Wise
The significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all law.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Law Love Significance
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
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
If we can find God only as he is revealed in nature we have no moral God.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

God Moral Revealed
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
Humour is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer … Laughter is swallowed up in prayer and humour is fulfilled by faith.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Facts Laughter Prayer
…(I)ndividual selfhood is expressed in the self’s capacity for self-transcendence and not in its rational capacity for conceptual and analytic procedures.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Self Spirituality Transcendence
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
Cheese, wine, and a friend must be old to be good.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

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

Age Bound Leaps Reaction
We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Believe Exercise Passion
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
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Accomplishment Lifetime Success

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

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

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