Top 100 Niebuhr Quotes
#1. 'fundamentalism' and 'liberalism' and terrorism.' These labels only tell us partial truths. We must use them humbly, guardedly, Niebuhr would say, aware of the limitations of our own vision and of our own capacity for misunderstanding and self-deception.
Krista Tippett
#2. When my eye rested on an arid height, spirit partook of the barrenness. - Heartily wish Niebuhr & Strauss to the dogs. The deuce take their penetration & acumen. They have robbed us of the bloom.
Herman Melville
#3. If the history of England be ever written by one who has the knowledge and the courage,-and both qualities are equally requisite for the undertaking, - the world will be more astonished than when reading the Roman annals by Niebuhr.
Benjamin Disraeli
#4. The society in which each man lives is at once the basis for, and the nemesis of, that fulness of life which each man seeks.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#5. We must fight their falsehood with our truth, but we must also fight the falsehood in our truth.
H. Richard Niebuhr
#6. Our dreams of a pure virtue are dissolved in a situation in which it is possible to exercise the virtue of responsibility toward a community of nations only by courting the prospective guilt of the atomic bomb.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#7. Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#8. Lord, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change,
he courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#9. Everyone has some kind of philosophy, some general worldview, which to men of other views will seem mythological.
H. Richard Niebuhr
#10. One of the fundamental points about religious humility is you say you don't know about the ultimate judgment. It's beyond your judgment. And if you equate God's judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#11. If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#12. For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#13. Pilgrims are persons in motion passing through territories not their own, seeking something we might call completion, or perhaps the word clarity will do as well, a goal to which only the spirit's compass points the way.
H. Richard Niebuhr
#14. A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architec75tural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#15. Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life's ethical problems.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#16. The more complex the world situation becomes, the more scientific and rational analysis you have to have, the less you can do with simple good will and sentiment.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#17. Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#18. We have previously suggested that philanthropy combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#20. There is no social evil, no form of injustice whether of the feudal or the capitalist order which has not been sanctified in some way or other by religious sentiment and thereby rendered more impervious to change.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#21. [There is] an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groups.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#22. Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#23. Nothing is as evanescent in history as the pansophic theories that flourish among the illuminati of all times under the bright sunlight of the latest scientific discoveries; and nothing can be more easily dismissed by later periods as mere speculation.
H. Richard Niebuhr
#24. Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#25. Even as rigorous a determinist as Karl Marx, who at times described the social behaviour of the bourgeoisie in terms which suggested a problem in social physics, could subject it at other times to a withering scorn which only the presupposition of moral responsibility could justify.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#26. All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#27. God, give us the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#28. Human Beings are just good enough to make democracy possible ... just bad enough to make it neccessary.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#30. Until the fear of catastrophe amends, or catastrophe itself destroys ...
Reinhold Niebuhr
#31. Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves and who do not probe deeply.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#32. This insinuation of the interests of the self into even the most ideal enterprises and most universal objectives, envisaged in moments of highest rationality, makes hypocrisy an inevitable by product of all virtuous endeavor.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#33. Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#34. There can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection.
Gustav Niebuhr
#35. All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#36. Evil is not to be traced back to the individual but to the collective behavior of humanity.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#37. The prophet himself stands under the judgment which he preaches. If he does not know that, he is a false prophet.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#38. As racial, economic and national groups, they take for themselves, whatever their power can command.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#39. There are no simple congruities in life or history. The cult of happiness erroneously assumes them.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#40. The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#41. The essence of man is his freedom. Sin is committed in that freedom. Sin can therefore not be attributed to a defect in his essence. It can only be understood as a self-contradiction, made possible by the fact of his freedom but not following necessarily from it.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#42. Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#43. For democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#44. The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#45. A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#46. All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#47. It's always wise to seek the truth in our opponents' error, and the error in our own truth.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#49. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#50. Rationality belongs to the cool observer, but because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith, and the naive faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications which are provided by the myth-maker to keep ordinary person on course.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#51. I'm not afraid of too many things, and I got that invincible kind of attitude from my father.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#53. We have, on the whole, more liberty and less equality than Russia has. Russia has less liberty and more equality. Whether democracy should be defined primarily in terms of liberty or equality is a source of unending debate.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#55. There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#57. (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
#58. The final test of religious faith ... is whether it will enable men to endure insecurity without complacency or despair, whether it can so interpret the ancient verities that they will not become mere escape hatches from responsibilities but instruments of insights into what civilization means.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#59. All you earnest young men out to save the world ... please, have a laugh.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#60. God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#61. The great Christian revolutions came not by the discovery of something that was not known before. They happen when someone takes radically something that was always there.
H. Richard Niebuhr
#62. Man is always worse than most people suspect, but also generally better than most people dream.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#63. What is so funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously. Laughter is the same and healthy response to the innocent foibles of men; and even to some which are not innocent.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#66. Better not read books in which you make acquaintance of the devil.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#67. Religion, declares the modern man, is consciousness of our highest social values. Nothing could be further from the truth. True religion is a profound uneasiness about our highest social values.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#68. History is a realm in which human freedom and natural necessity are curiously intermingled.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#69. There is no deeper pathos in the spiritual life of man than the cruelty of righteous people. If any one idea dominates the teachings of Jesus, it is his opposition to the self-righteousness of the righteous.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#70. Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#71. Change is the essence of life; be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#72. Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#74. Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#75. We have had to learn that history is neither a God nor a redeemer.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#76. If you are mindful, you can eat the bread and the bread represents the whole cosmos ... You set the table, you lay the food in the presence of God. Mindfulness is the awareness that shines on every act in every moment.
Gustav Niebuhr
#78. Despotism, which we regard with abhorrence, is rather too plausible in decaying feudal, agrarian, pastoral societies. That's why we must expect to have many a defeat before we'll have an ultimate victory in this contest with Communism.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#79. Toleration of people who differ in convictions and habits requires a residual awareness of the complexity of truth and the possibility of opposing view having some light on one or the other facet of a many-sided truth.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#80. Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#81. A church has the right to set its own standards within its community. I don't think it has a right to prohibit birth control or to enforce upon a secular society its conception of divorce and the indissolubility of the marriage tie.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#82. A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#83. The history of mankind is a perennial tragedy; for the highest ideals which the individual may project are ideals which he can never realize in social and collective terms.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#84. The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#85. Humour is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer ... Laughter is swallowed up in prayer and humour is fulfilled by faith.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#86. All men are naturally included to obscure the morally ambiguous element in their political cause by investing it with religious sanctity.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#88. Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#89. The individual or the group which organizes any society, however social its intentions or pretensions, arrogates an inordinate portion of social privilege to itself.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#90. If we can find God only as he is revealed in nature we have no moral God.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#91. The cross symbolizes a cosmic as well as historic truth. Love conquers the world, but its victory is not an easy one.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#92. Man is both strong and weak, both free and bound, both blind and far-seeing. He stands at the juncture of nature and spirit; and is involved in both freedom and necessity.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#93. Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#94. I cannot worship the abstractions of virtue: she only charms me when she addresses herself to my heart, speaks through the love from which she springs.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#95. It is my strong conviction that a realist conception of human nature should be made a servant of an ethic of progressive justice and should not be made into a bastion of conservatism, particularly a conservatism which defends unjust privileges.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#96. The significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all law.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#97. History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#98. The fence and the boundary line are the symbols of the spirit of justice. They set the limits upon each man's interest to prevent one from taking advantage of the other.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#99. What is funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously.
Reinhold Niebuhr
#100. I think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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