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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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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
Social
Element
Explains
Power
Latter
Previously
Generous
Suggested
Pity
Inclined
Genuine
Philanthropy
Elements
Grant
Justice
Grants
Powerful
Display
Combines

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I don't know whether any religious leader would say that we must ultimately win, because we're on God's side. If they do say that, it's bad religion.
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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.
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If you equate God's judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.
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For democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.
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All this talk about atheistic materialism and God-fearing American I think is beside the point it's a rather vapid form of religion.
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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.
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Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted and pure love without power is destroyed.
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The significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all law.
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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.
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To the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible.
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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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Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.
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We have had to learn that history is neither a God nor a redeemer.
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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.
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Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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The measure of our rationality determines the degree of vividness with which we appreciate the needs of other life, the extent to which we become conscious of the real character of our own motives and impulses, the ability to harmonize conflicting impulses in our own life and in society, and the capacity to choose adequate means for approved ends.
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Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.
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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.
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No nation can say, 'We will capitulate to tyranny rather than accept a speculative fate - to accept an absolute fate in alternative to a speculative one' - no nation can do that.
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A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.
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