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You can't say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.

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
Answer
Particular
Answers
Religion
Give
Giving
Irreligion
Dilemma
Nuclear

More quotes by 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.
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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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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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There is no social evil, no form of injustice whether of the feudal or the capitalist order which has not been sanctified in some way or other by religious sentiment and thereby rendered more impervious to change.
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I think there is and ultimate answer in a true religious faith, but it doesn't give you any immediate answers, it doesn't.
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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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Not only in America but in Germany, in France since the war, in Germany after the First World War, the Germany of Adenauer, these are the creative relationships of Catholicism to a free society that the average American doesn't fully appreciate.
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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.
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I think that the achievements of Catholicism on race are very, very impressive.
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There must be a realm of truth beyond political competence, that's why there must be a separation of churches, but if religion is bad and a bad religion is one that gives an ultimate sanctity to some particular cause.
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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.
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Change what cannot be accepted and accept what cannot be changed.
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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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All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.
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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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Ultimately freedom is necessary for a society, because every despotic society - for instance, the Russian society - lives on the basis of a rather implausible dogma - the Marxist dogma of world redemption through Communism.
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Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
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The will-to-live becomes the will-to-power.
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Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument.
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The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.
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