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Perhaps the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy.
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
Moral
Nations
Characteristic
Hypocrisy
Characteristics
Significant
Nation
Perhaps
Politics
More quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr
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
All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Faith is the final triumph over incongruity, the final assertion of the meaningfulness of existence.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Great talents have some admirers, but few friends.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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
Politics deals with a common-sense approach to the imponderables of history, that I think are obscured by a certain kind of rationalism.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Aim for the stars and maybe you'll reach the sky.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.
Reinhold Niebuhr
For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.
Reinhold Niebuhr
The prophet himself stands under the judgment which he preaches. If he does not know that, he is a false prophet.
Reinhold Niebuhr
We have had to learn that history is neither a God nor a redeemer.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Every experience proves that the real problem of our existence lies in the fact that we ought to love one another, but do not.
Reinhold Niebuhr
To the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible.
Reinhold Niebuhr
The churches that are most obviously democratic are most obviously given to race prejudice. I mean the churches that have absolute congregational control.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Since inequalities of privilege are greater than could possibly be defended rationally, the intelligence of privileged groups is usually applied to the task of inventing specious proofs for the theory that universal values spring from, and that general interests are served by, the special privileges which they hold.
Reinhold Niebuhr
