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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

All this talk about atheistic materialism and God-fearing American I think is beside the point; it’s a rather vapid form of religion.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Materialism Thinking Vapid
The history of mankind is a perennial tragedy; for the highest ideals which the individual may project are ideals which he can never realize in social and collective terms.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

May Realizing Tragedy
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
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 nuclear age has refuted the idea of progress and Marxism has been refuted by Stalinism. Therefore people have returned to the historic religion.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Age Ideas People
There must be equality of all men before God and in a democratic society. Now that’s one of the great achievements.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Achievement Democratic Men
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
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

Common Kind Sense Thinking
All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

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

Age Bound Leaps Reaction
For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Desire Historical Men
The separation of church and state is necessary partly because if religion is good then the state shouldn’t interfere with the religious vision or with the religious prophet.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Country Giving People Religious
The fanatic is dangerous.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Dangerous Fanatics Life People
We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Believe Exercise Passion
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.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Essence Men Self
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

Hypocrisy Moments Self

I think there is and ultimate answer in a true religious faith, but it doesn’t give you any immediate answers, it doesn’t.

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I think there is and ultimate answer in a true religious faith, but it doesn’t give you any immediate answers, it doesn’t.

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