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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.

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
Men
Jews
Ages
Jew
Obscures
Middle
Lenders
Age
Dishonest
Business
Covers
Facts
Stereotype
Money
Slightly

More quotes by 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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Rationalism belongs to the cool observer. But because of the stupidity of the average person, they follow not reason, but faith. This naïve faith, requires necessary illusions and emotionally potent oversimplifications, which are provided by the myth maker to keep the ordinary person on course.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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I think that when we believe that something is right, there's a serious ambivalence about it. On one hand, you say, because it's right, it must be victorious. On the other hand, you say, it's right whether it's victorious or not. And this is what I believe about a free society.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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I'm not afraid of too many things, and I got that invincible kind of attitude from my father.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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
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For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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There has been a religious revival because - let me put it like this, the people that weren't traditionally religious, conventionally religious, had a religion of their own in my youth. These were liberals who believed in the idea of progress or they were Marxists. Both of these secular religions have broken down.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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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Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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To the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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.
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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Perhaps the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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For democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.
Reinhold Niebuhr