Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
Top 79 wise famous quotes and sayings by Reinhold Niebuhr
Reinhold Niebuhr Famous Quotes & Sayings
Discover top inspirational quotes from Reinhold Niebuhr on Wise Famous Quotes.
Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it.
All men are naturally included to obscure the morally ambiguous element in their political cause by investing it with religious sanctity.
Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
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.
he courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Faith is the final triumph over incongruity, the final assertion of the meaningfulness of existence.
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
As racial, economic and national groups, they take for themselves, whatever their power can command.
Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.
A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.
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.
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.
I think I should know how to educate a boy, but not a girl; I should be in danger of making her too learned.
The prophet himself stands under the judgment which he preaches. If he does not know that, he is a false prophet.
Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure.
It is significant that it is as difficult to get charity out of piety as to get reasonableness out of rationalism.
The significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all law.
The old prose writers wrote as if they were speaking to an audience; while, among us, prose is invariably written for the eye alone.
Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.
Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life.
The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.
The pretensions of final truth are always partlyan effort to obscure a darkly felt consciousness of the limits of human knowledge.
The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.
The evils against which we contend are frequently the fruits of illusions which are similar to our own.
The cross symbolizes a cosmic as well as historic truth. Love conquers the world, but its victory is not an easy one.
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.
To the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible.
Every experience proves that the real problem of our existence lies in the fact that we ought to love one another, but do not.
Human Beings are just good enough to make democracy possible ... just bad enough to make it neccessary.
It is the evil in man that makes democracy necessary, and man's belief in justice that makes democracy possible.
The chief source of man's inhumanity to man seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to other men.