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Man has always been his own most vexing problem.

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
Vexing
Problem
Always
Men

More quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr

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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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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The Jews were the money-lenders of the Middle Ages so there's a stereotype of the slightly or more than slightly dishonest business man and this stereotype covers and obscures all the facts.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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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Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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
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I think that the achievements of Catholicism on race are very, very impressive.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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The individual or the group which organizes any society, however social its intentions or pretensions, arrogates an inordinate portion of social privilege to itself.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone therefore we are saved by love.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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
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It's always wise to seek the truth in our opponents' error, and the error in our own truth.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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The essence of man is his freedom. Sin is committed in that freedom. Sin can therefore not be attributed to a defect in his essence. It can only be understood as a self-contradiction, made possible by the fact of his freedom but not following necessarily from it.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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
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Religion, declares the modern man, is consciousness of our highest social values. Nothing could be further from the truth. True religion is a profound uneasiness about our highest social values.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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Faith is the final triumph over incongruity, the final assertion of the meaningfulness of existence.
Reinhold Niebuhr