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History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life.

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
[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

Group Men Vices
The significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all law.
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Law Love Significance
A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Genuine Mysterious Mystery
The measure of our rationality determines the degree of vividness with which we appreciate the needs of other life, the extent to which we become conscious of the real character of our own motives and impulses.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Character Mean Real
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

Dangerous Life Meaning More Much
The stupidity of the average man will permit the oligarch, whether economic or political, to hide his real purposes from the scrutiny of his fellows and to withdraw his activities from effective control.
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Real Running Sacrifice
Marxism is the modern form of Jewish prophecy.
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Form Modern
All this talk about atheistic materialism and God-fearing American I think is beside the point; it’s a rather vapid form of religion.
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Materialism Thinking Vapid
Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.
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Accomplished Life Lifetime Single
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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Common Kind Sense Thinking
All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.
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Humans Intention Sin
A dogma which was intended to guarantee the economic freedom of the individual became the “ideology” of vast corporate structures of a later period of capitalism, used by them, and still used, to prevent a proper political control of their power.
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Capitalism Dogma Economic Freedom Guarantee
We ought to really at least recognize the common predicament of Communists and democrats – or Americans, whatever.
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Common Communist Predicaments
Our dreams of bringing the whole of human history under the control of the human will are ironically refuted by the fact that no group of idealists can easily move the pattern of history toward the desired goal of peace and justice.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Drama Dream Moving
Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.
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Goodness Love Power
Great talents have some admirers, but few friends.
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Admirer Few Friends Talent
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
A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Democracy Justice Republic
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.
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Achievement Good Life Philosophy
Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life’s ethical problems.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Men Problem Way
For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
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Desire Historical Men
If you equate God’s judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Judgment Religion Wrong
The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.
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Historical Persistance Reckoning
Man is endowed by nature with organic relations to his fellow men; and natural impulse prompts him to consider the needs of others even when they compete with his own.
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Fellow Impulse Men Needs
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 think I have one answer, that is partly religious and partly secular; and that is to say, we ought to at least recognize that we and the Russians are in a common predicament. That would be religious in the sense, “Judge not lest you be judged.”
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Judging Religious Thinking

History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life.

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History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life.

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