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I don't know whether any religious leader would say that we must ultimately win, because we're on God's side. If they do say that, it's bad religion.

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
Whether
Religion
Must
Ultimately
Would
Side
Leader
Sides
Winning
Religious

More quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr

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To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
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Democracies are indeed slow to make war, but once embarked upon a martial venture are equally slow to make peace and reluctant to make a tolerable, rather than a vindictive, peace.
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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 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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For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
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That is the truth about man - that he has a curious kind of dignity, but also a curious kind of misery, and that these forms of agnosticism don't understand.
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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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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
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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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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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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
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I think I have one answer, that is partly religious and partly secular and that is to say, we ought to at least recognize that we and the Russians are in a common predicament. That would be religious in the sense, Judge not lest you be judged.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument.
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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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
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If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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
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Humour is, in fact, a prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer … Laughter is swallowed up in prayer and humour is fulfilled by faith.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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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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History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life.
Reinhold Niebuhr