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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

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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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Every experience proves that the real problem of our existence lies in the fact that we ought to love one another, but do not.
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The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.
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I think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.
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Certainly, anybody who says, in the eyes of God, is pretentious.
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Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument.
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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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I wouldn't judge a man by the presuppositions of his life, but only by the fruits of his life. And the fruits - the relevant fruits - are, I'd say, a sense of charity, a sense of proportion, a sense of justice.
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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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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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Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.
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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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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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For democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.
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For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.
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Change what cannot be accepted and accept what cannot be changed.
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The significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all law.
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Religion, declares the modern man, is consciousness of our highest social values. Nothing could be further from the truth. True religion is a profound uneasiness about our highest social values.
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Man is both strong and weak, both free and bound, both blind and far-seeing. He stands at the juncture of nature and spirit and is involved in both freedom and necessity.
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The will-to-live becomes the will-to-power.
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