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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.

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
Terrible
Risk
War
Capitulation
Order
Stumble
May
Communism
Escape
Nuclear

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The history of mankind is a perennial tragedy for the highest ideals which the individual may project are ideals which he can never realize in social and collective terms.
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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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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.
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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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Change what cannot be accepted and accept what cannot be changed.
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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.
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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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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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Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure.
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The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
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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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If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.
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Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
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We don't properly discriminate. We never discriminate properly when we're dealing with another group and one of the big problems about religion is that religious people don't know that they are probably as flagrant in these misjudgments as irreligious people.
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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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Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
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Better not read books in which you make acquaintance of the devil.
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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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I think that the achievements of Catholicism on race are very, very impressive.
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