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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.

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
Religion
Fearing
Form
Atheistic
Think
Materialism
Thinking
Beside
Talk
American
Point
Rather
Vapid

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For democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.
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Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life's ethical problems.
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This insinuation of the interests of the self into even the most ideal enterprises and most universal objectives, envisaged in moments of highest rationality, makes hypocrisy an inevitable by product of all virtuous endeavor.
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I think that the achievements of Catholicism on race are very, very impressive.
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The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.
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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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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.
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To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
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The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.
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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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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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Faith is the final triumph over incongruity, the final assertion of the meaningfulness of existence.
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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.
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One of the fundamental points about religious humility is you say you don't know about the ultimate judgment. It's beyond your judgment. And if you equate God's judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.
Reinhold Niebuhr
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Certainly, anybody who says, in the eyes of God, is pretentious.
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Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life.
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The cross symbolizes a cosmic as well as historic truth. Love conquers the world, but its victory is not an easy one.
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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.
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Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument.
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