Quote

The history of mankind is a perennial tragedy for the highest ideals which the individual may project are ideals which he can never realize in social and collective terms.

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
Never
Mankind
Collectives
Realize
Collective
Realizing
Project
Term
Tragedy
Individual
Ideals
History
Projects
Social
Terms
May
Highest
Perennial

More quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr

Image
Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life's ethical problems.
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
I think that the achievements of Catholicism on race are very, very impressive.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
I think that the Christian faith is right as against simple forms of secularism. That it believes that there is in man a radical freedom, and this freedom is creative but it is also destructive. And there's nothing that prevents this from being both creative and destructive.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
I'm not afraid of too many things, and I got that invincible kind of attitude from my father.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
Whether the man is an atheist or a Christian, I would judge him by his fruits, and I have therefore many agnostic friends.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
The Communists do have a god, the Dialectic of History, which guarantees everything that they're going to do and guarantees them victory that's why they're fanatic.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
Man has always been his own most vexing problem.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
We have had to learn that history is neither a God nor a redeemer.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
I've long ago felt, I have many Jewish friends and I very I think creative Jewish friends, and I've long felt that the average Christian didn't realize the tremendous capacity for civic righteousness among our Jewish people.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
It is my strong conviction that a realist conception of human nature should be made a servant of an ethic of progressive justice and should not be made into a bastion of conservatism, particularly a conservatism which defends unjust privileges.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
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
Image
Change what cannot be accepted and accept what cannot be changed.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
Faith is the final triumph over incongruity, the final assertion of the meaningfulness of existence.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.
Reinhold Niebuhr