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 NIEBUHRThe old prose writers wrote as if they were speaking to an audience; while, among us, prose is invariably written for the eye alone.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
-
-
For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR -
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 -
Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR -
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 -
We have to risk a nuclear war in order to escape capitulation to Communism. For all I know, we may stumble into this terrible war.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR -
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 pretensions of final truth are always partlyan effort to obscure a darkly felt consciousness of the limits of human knowledge.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR -
The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR -
History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR -
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 -
You can’t say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR -
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR -
If we can find God only as he is revealed in nature we have no moral God.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR -
Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR -
We ought to really at least recognize the common predicament of Communists and democrats – or Americans, whatever.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR







