That is the truth about man - that he has a curious kind of dignity, but also a curious kind of misery,… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share Image
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 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
I think that the Christian faith is right as against simple forms of secularism. That it believes that there is in man… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share Image
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share Image
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous… — Reinhold Niebuhr Copy Share Image
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true… — 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
The stupidity of the average man will permit the oligarch, whether economic or political, to hide his real purposes from the scrutiny… — 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
