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

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
Substitutes
Mastery
Believed
Environmental
Nature
Vainly
Self
Stewardship
Substitute
Adequate

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Perhaps the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy.
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Democracies are indeed slow to make war, but once embarked upon a martial venture are equally slow to make peace and reluctant to make a tolerable, rather than a vindictive, peace.
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I thank heaven I have often had it in my power to give help and relief, and this is still my greatest pleasure. If I could choose my sphere of action now, it would be that of the most simple and direct efforts of this kind.
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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.
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It's always wise to seek the truth in our opponents' error, and the error in our own truth.
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Whether the man is an atheist or a Christian, I would judge him by his fruits, and I have therefore many agnostic friends.
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Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument.
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A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.
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It is significant that it is as difficult to get charity out of piety as to get reasonableness out of rationalism.
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Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
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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.
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Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.
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Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.
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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.
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Politics deals with a common-sense approach to the imponderables of history, that I think are obscured by a certain kind of rationalism.
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Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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Better not read books in which you make acquaintance of the devil.
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The churches that are most obviously democratic are most obviously given to race prejudice. I mean the churches that have absolute congregational control.
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Aim for the stars and maybe you'll reach the sky.
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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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