Form Quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr

10 Form quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr

Niebuhr’s moral realism often turns to the frameworks that shape ethical decisions. These ten brief excerpts show his careful balance of hope and realism when discussing form.

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Marxism is the modern form of Jewish prophecy.

Reinhold Niebuhr

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That is the truth about man - that he has a curious kind of dignity, but also a curious kind of misery,…

Reinhold Niebuhr

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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

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There is no social evil, no form of injustice whether of the feudal or the capitalist order which has not been sanctified…

Reinhold Niebuhr

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I think that the Christian faith is right as against simple forms of secularism. That it believes that there is in man…

Reinhold Niebuhr

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Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous…

Reinhold Niebuhr

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Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous…

Reinhold Niebuhr

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Marxism was the social creed and the social cry of those classes who knew by their miseries that the creed of the…

Reinhold Niebuhr

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Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true…

Reinhold Niebuhr

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The stupidity of the average man will permit the oligarch, whether economic or political, to hide his real purposes from the scrutiny…

Reinhold Niebuhr

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There are evidently limits to the achievements of science; and there are irresolvable contradictions both between prosperity and virtue, and between happiness and ''the…

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Perhapsthemost sublimeinsights oftheJewishprophets and the Christian gospel is the knowledge that since perfection is love, the apprehension of perfection is at once the means…

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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…

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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

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Human beings are endowed by nature with both selfish and unselfish impulses.

Reinhold Niebuhr

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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

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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

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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

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The pretensions of final truth are always partlyan effort to obscure a darkly felt consciousness of the limits of human knowledge.

Reinhold Niebuhr

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All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.

Reinhold Niebuhr

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Man is always worse than most people suspect, but also generally better than most people dream.

Reinhold Niebuhr

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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

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...(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

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The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men.

Reinhold Niebuhr

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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

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