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The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.

Reinhold Niebuhr

If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Courage Steel Survival
To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
REINHOLD NIEBUHR

Feels Religious
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
Certainly, anybody who says, “in the eyes of God,” is pretentious.
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Anybody Eye Pretentious
The more complex the world situation becomes, the more scientific and rational analysis you have to have, the less you can do with simple good will and sentiment.
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Analysis Simple World
If you equate God’s judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.
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Judgment Religion Wrong
There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion.
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Cures Pride Religion
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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Inspirational Life Motivational
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
It’s always wise to seek the truth in our opponents’ error, and the error in our own truth.
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Errors Opponents Wise
I’m not afraid of too many things, and I got that invincible kind of attitude from my father.
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Attitude Father Kind
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
[There is] an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groups.
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Group Men Vices
The Communists do have a god, the Dialectic of History, which guarantees everything that they’re going to do and guarantees them victory; that’s why they’re fanatic.
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Communist Guarantees Victory
That’s why history is not an answer to our problem, because history complicates, enlarges every problem of human existence. Now, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries didn’t believe this.
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Answers Believe Problem
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

Belief Confused Thinking
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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Dangerous Life Meaning More Much
Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.
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Goodness Love Power
All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.
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Coercion Cooperation Groups
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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Church Congregational Mean Race
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
There must be equality of all men before God and in a democratic society. Now that’s one of the great achievements.
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Achievement Democratic Men
Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
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Reason Satisfaction Selfish
For democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.
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Democracy Method Problem
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.
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Hypocrisy Moments Self
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

The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.

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The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.

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