Inspirational Quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr

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

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

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

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

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

— Reinhold Niebuhr

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

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

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

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

— Reinhold Niebuhr

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

— Reinhold Niebuhr

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

— Reinhold Niebuhr

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

...(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

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

— Reinhold Niebuhr

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