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Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life.

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
Bases
Deeply
Virtue
Impulses
Moral
Sole
Social
Rooted
Reason
Impulse
Men
Basis
Life
Rational

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For democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.
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We judge the Russians because they're living under despotism and we don't like it, but we've gotten into a fix now where we're living in a common predicament, and we ought to recognize this common predicament.
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Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone therefore we are saved by love.
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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.
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I think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.
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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.
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Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.
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It's always wise to seek the truth in our opponents' error, and the error in our own truth.
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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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Better not read books in which you make acquaintance of the devil.
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A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.
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This insinuation of the interests of the self into even the most ideal enterprises and most universal objectives, envisaged in moments of highest rationality, makes hypocrisy an inevitable by product of all virtuous endeavor.
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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There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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.
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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
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The cross symbolizes a cosmic as well as historic truth. Love conquers the world, but its victory is not an easy one.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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