World Quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr

8 World quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr

All World quotes Reinhold Niebuhr’s page

Reinhold Niebuhr’s moral rigor surfaces in these eight brief statements about the world, each echoing his thoughtful blend of realism and hope. Though limited in number, they serve as a solid entry point to his philosophical outlook.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to…

Reinhold Niebuhr

Image

Adam Smith's was a real universalism in intent. Laissez Faire was intended to establish a world community as well as a natural…

Reinhold Niebuhr

Image

Ultimately freedom is necessary for a society, because every despotic society - for instance, the Russian society - lives on the basis…

Reinhold Niebuhr

Image

The more complex the world situation becomes, the more scientific and rational analysis you have to have, the less you can do…

Reinhold Niebuhr

Image

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

Reinhold Niebuhr

Image

The cross symbolizes a cosmic as well as historic truth. Love conquers the world, but its victory is not an easy one.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Image

Not only in America but in Germany, in France since the war, in Germany after the First World War, the Germany of…

Reinhold Niebuhr

Image

All you earnest young men out to save the world. . . please, have a laugh.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Image

Other authors on World

More 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

Image

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

Image

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

Image

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

Image

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

Reinhold Niebuhr

Image

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

Image

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

Image

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

Image

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

Reinhold Niebuhr

Image

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

Reinhold Niebuhr

Image

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

Reinhold Niebuhr

Image

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

Image

...(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

Image

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

Reinhold Niebuhr

Image

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

Image