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Religion mustn't interfere with the state - so one of the basic Democratic principles as we know it in America is the separation of church and state.

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
Democratic
Principles
State
Church
Religion
Mustn
America
Interfere
States
Separation
Basic

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What is so funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously. Laughter is the same and healthy response to the innocent foibles of men and even to some which are not innocent.
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Great talents have some admirers, but few friends.
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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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Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.
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The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men.
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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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The prophet himself stands under the judgment which he preaches. If he does not know that, he is a false prophet.
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Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
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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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Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.
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Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history therefore we must be saved by faith.
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For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
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[There is] an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groups.
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The churches that are most obviously democratic are most obviously given to race prejudice. I mean the churches that have absolute congregational control.
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Aim for the stars and maybe you'll reach the sky.
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The Jews were the money-lenders of the Middle Ages so there's a stereotype of the slightly or more than slightly dishonest business man and this stereotype covers and obscures all the facts.
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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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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.
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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.
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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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