The history of mankind is a perennial tragedy; for the highest ideals which the individual may project are ideals which he can… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share Image
We have previously suggested that philanthropy combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share Image
Religion, declares the modern man, is consciousness of our highest social values. Nothing could be further from the truth. True religion is… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share Image
Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life. — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share Image
“To the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible.” — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share Image
The individual or the group which organizes any society, however social its intentions or pretensions, arrogates an inordinate portion of social privilege… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share Image
There is no social evil, no form of injustice whether of the feudal or the capitalist order which has not been sanctified… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share Image
All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion. — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share Image
Marxism was the social creed and the social cry of those classes who knew by their miseries that the creed of the… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share Image
“Even as rigorous a determinist as Karl Marx, who at times described the social behaviour of the bourgeoisie in terms which suggested… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share Image
There are evidently limits to the achievements of science; and there are irresolvable contradictions both between prosperity and virtue, and between happiness and ''the… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share
Perhapsthemost sublimeinsights oftheJewishprophets and the Christian gospel is the knowledge that since perfection is love, the apprehension of perfection is at once the means… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share
The essence of man is his freedom. Sin is committed in that freedom. Sin can therefore not be attributed to a defect in his… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share
Liberalism makes this mistake in regard to private property and Marxism makes it in regard to socialized property... The Marxist illusion is partly derived… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share
Human beings are endowed by nature with both selfish and unselfish impulses. — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share
There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share
Freedom is necessary for two reasons. It's necessary for the individual, because the individual, no matter how good the society is, every individual has… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share
The pretensions of final truth are always partlyan effort to obscure a darkly felt consciousness of the limits of human knowledge. — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share
All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion. — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share
Man is always worse than most people suspect, but also generally better than most people dream. — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share
When a church reaches up beyond its group and tries to enforce its standards upon a society that doesn't accept these standards, and perhaps… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share
...(I)ndividual selfhood is expressed in the self's capacity for self-transcendence and not in its rational capacity for conceptual and analytic procedures. — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share
The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men. — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share
Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share
