Quote

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.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Dimension
Religion
Bows
Action
Dimensions
Every
Tension
Creates
Bends
Depth
Arrow
Consciousness
Arrows
Ought
Flies

More quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr

Image
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
Image
[There is] an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groups.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
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
Image
The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
We have to risk a nuclear war in order to escape capitulation to Communism. For all I know, we may stumble into this terrible war.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
To the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
A church has the right to set its own standards within its community. I don't think it has a right to prohibit birth control or to enforce upon a secular society its conception of divorce and the indissolubility of the marriage tie.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
I wouldn't judge a man by the presuppositions of his life, but only by the fruits of his life. And the fruits - the relevant fruits - are, I'd say, a sense of charity, a sense of proportion, a sense of justice.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
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
Image
Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
You can't say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
I think I have one answer, that is partly religious and partly secular and that is to say, we ought to at least recognize that we and the Russians are in a common predicament. That would be religious in the sense, Judge not lest you be judged.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
We don't properly discriminate. We never discriminate properly when we're dealing with another group and one of the big problems about religion is that religious people don't know that they are probably as flagrant in these misjudgments as irreligious people.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
I think that the achievements of Catholicism on race are very, very impressive.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
There is no social evil, no form of injustice whether of the feudal or the capitalist order which has not been sanctified in some way or other by religious sentiment and thereby rendered more impervious to change.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
Aim for the stars and maybe you'll reach the sky.
Reinhold Niebuhr