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Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure.

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
Wisdom
Sure
Faith
Doubly
Never
Frantic
Unsure
Orthodoxy
Rooted
Doubt

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.
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The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.
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Better not read books in which you make acquaintance of the devil.
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You can't say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.
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I'm not afraid of too many things, and I got that invincible kind of attitude from my father.
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If you equate God's judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.
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Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.
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The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.
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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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Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
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Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it.
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Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life.
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For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
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The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
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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.
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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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
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.
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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.
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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