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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

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Reinhold Niebuhr
Age: 78 †
Born: 1892
Born: June 21
Died: 1971
Died: June 1
Ethicist
Philosopher
Political Scientist
Theologian
University Teacher
Wright City
Missouri
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
Results
Situations
Situation
Consequences
War
Tyranny
Refusal
Political
Consequence
Inheritance
May
Worse
Historic
Even
Result
Aggression
However
Imperfect
Civilization
Defend

More quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr

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Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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We don't properly discriminate. We never discriminate properly when we're dealing with another group and one of the big problems about religion is that religious people don't know that they are probably as flagrant in these misjudgments as irreligious people.
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I've long ago felt, I have many Jewish friends and I very I think creative Jewish friends, and I've long felt that the average Christian didn't realize the tremendous capacity for civic righteousness among our Jewish people.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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
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If you equate God's judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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Aim for the stars and maybe you'll reach the sky.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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For democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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That is one of the flagrant misconceptions about Catholicism in America that if a man is a Catholic he owes allegiance to what they say a foreign sovereign, or something like that.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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The dimension of depth in the consciousness of religion creates the tension between what is and what ought to be. It bends the bow from which every arrow of moral action flies.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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All this talk about atheistic materialism and God-fearing American I think is beside the point it's a rather vapid form of religion.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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There has been a religious revival because - let me put it like this, the people that weren't traditionally religious, conventionally religious, had a religion of their own in my youth. These were liberals who believed in the idea of progress or they were Marxists. Both of these secular religions have broken down.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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
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Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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I think that the achievements of Catholicism on race are very, very impressive.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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Perhaps the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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Our dreams of bringing the whole of human history under the control of the human will are ironically refuted by the fact that no group of idealists can easily move the pattern of history toward the desired goal of peace and justice. The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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
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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