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 NIEBUHRIf you equate God’s judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.
More Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
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Certainly, anybody who says, “in the eyes of God,” is pretentious.
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Whether the man is an atheist or a Christian, I would judge him by his fruits, and I have therefore many agnostic friends.
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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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The churches that are most obviously democratic are most obviously given to race prejudice. I mean the churches that have absolute congregational control.
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God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
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Therefore we have a long history of freedom, where people try to extricate themselves from tyranny for the sake of art, for the sake of science, for the sake of religion, for the sake of the conscience of the individual – this freedom is necessary for the individual.
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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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Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life’s ethical problems.
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The essence of man is his freedom. Sin is committed in that freedom. Sin can therefore not be attributed to a defect in his essence. It can only be understood as a self-contradiction, made possible by the fact of his freedom but not following necessarily from it.
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The fanatic is dangerous.
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Aim for the stars and maybe you’ll reach the sky.
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The cross symbolizes a cosmic as well as historic truth. Love conquers the world, but its victory is not an easy one.
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We have, on the whole, more liberty and less equality than Russia has. Russia has less liberty and more equality. Whether democracy should be defined primarily in terms of liberty or equality is a source of unending debate.
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The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
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To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
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