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What is so funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously. Laughter is the same and healthy response to the innocent foibles of men and even to some which are not innocent.
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
Innocent
Men
Seriously
Laughter
Response
Healthy
Funny
Foibles
Theologian
Take
Precisely
Even
More quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr
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
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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.
Reinhold Niebuhr
All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Great talents have some admirers, but few friends.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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
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
Aim for the stars and maybe you'll reach the sky.
Reinhold Niebuhr
One of the fundamental points about religious humility is you say you don't know about the ultimate judgment. It's beyond your judgment. And if you equate God's judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.
Reinhold Niebuhr
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Reinhold Niebuhr
We misjudge anybody who's different from us and the Jews diverge from our type, ethnically and religiously. That's their chief offense, but there are particular causes.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Perhaps the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted and pure love without power is destroyed.
Reinhold Niebuhr
That is the truth about man - that he has a curious kind of dignity, but also a curious kind of misery, and that these forms of agnosticism don't understand.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
Reinhold Niebuhr
It is my strong conviction that a realist conception of human nature should be made a servant of an ethic of progressive justice and should not be made into a bastion of conservatism, particularly a conservatism which defends unjust privileges.
Reinhold Niebuhr
I think there is and ultimate answer in a true religious faith, but it doesn't give you any immediate answers, it doesn't.
Reinhold Niebuhr
I think that when we believe that something is right, there's a serious ambivalence about it. On one hand, you say, because it's right, it must be victorious. On the other hand, you say, it's right whether it's victorious or not. And this is what I believe about a free society.
Reinhold Niebuhr