Reinhold Niebuhr quotes

Forgiveness is the final form of love.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Love #Forgiveness #Philosophical

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Freedom #Integrity #Adversity

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

#Men #Profound #Consciousness

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good 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 must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Love #Beautiful #Forgiveness

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next. Amen.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Inspirational #Courage #Differences

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

#Wise #Art #Ignorance

Evil is not to be traced back to the individual but to the collective behavior of humanity.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Evil #Humanity #Behavior

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

#People #Evil #Done

All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Men #Serenity #Grace

All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Sin #Intention #Humans

The chief source of man's inhumanity to man seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to other men.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Men #Limits #Hell

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

#Victory #World #Conquer

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

#Beautiful

It is significant that it is as difficult to get charity out of piety as to get reasonableness out of rationalism.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Charity #Significant #Difficult

Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Love #Power #Goodness

The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Nature #Self #Mastery

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Love #Accomplishment #Accomplished

Change what cannot be accepted and accept what cannot be changed.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Accepted #Accepting #Changed

The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Moving On #Wisdom #Achievement

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

#Family #Justice #Spirit

There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#War #Civilization #Political

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Success #Lifetime

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

#Justice #World #Politics

If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Courage #Survival #Steel

History is a realm in which human freedom and natural necessity are curiously intermingled.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Natural #Realms #Humans

God, give us the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Giving #Serenity #Grace

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

#Coercion #Groups #Cooperation

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

#Men #Life Is #Bases

As racial, economic and national groups, they take for themselves, whatever their power can command.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Groups #Economic #Command

For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Men #Historical #Desire

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

#Selfish #Unselfish #Impulse

To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Religious #Feels

...(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

#Self #Spirituality #Capacity

We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization. We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about a particular degree of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimatized.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Believe #Passion #Exercise

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

#Religious #Order #Evil

Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can only be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice. Justice requires that we carefully weigh rights and privileges and assure that each member of a community receives his due share. Love does not weigh rights and privileges too carefully because it prompts each to bear the burden of the other.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Life #Rights #Justice

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

#Responsibility #Behaviour #Bourgeoisie

Since inequalities of privilege are greater than could possibly be defended rationally, the intelligence of privileged groups is usually applied to the task of inventing specious proofs for the theory that universal values spring from, and that general interests are served by, the special privileges which they hold.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Spring #Special #Groups

To the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Order #Effort #Social

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

#Religious #Mean #Responsibility

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

#Dream #Men #People

Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life's ethical problems.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Men #Way #Problem

There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

#Pride #Religion #Cures

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

#Thinking #Together #Clubs