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The more complex the world situation becomes, the more scientific and rational analysis you have to have, the less you can do with simple good will and sentiment.

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
Becomes
Situation
Sentiment
Simple
Sentiments
Less
Complexes
Good
Analysis
World
Complex
Scientific
Rational

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Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it.
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Better not read books in which you make acquaintance of the devil.
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Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.
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It is significant that it is as difficult to get charity out of piety as to get reasonableness out of rationalism.
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If you equate God's judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.
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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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I think there is and ultimate answer in a true religious faith, but it doesn't give you any immediate answers, it doesn't.
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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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The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
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Our dreams of bringing the whole of human history under the control of the human will are ironically refuted by the fact that no group of idealists can easily move the pattern of history toward the desired goal of peace and justice. The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.
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Ultimately freedom is necessary for a society, because every despotic society - for instance, the Russian society - lives on the basis of a rather implausible dogma - the Marxist dogma of world redemption through Communism.
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Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted and pure love without power is destroyed.
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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.
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Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life's ethical problems.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.
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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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It's always wise to seek the truth in our opponents' error, and the error in our own truth.
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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.
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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.
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