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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
Escape
Nuclear
Terrible
Risk
War
Order
Capitulation
May
Stumble
Communism

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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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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 essence of man is his freedom. Sin is committed in that freedom. Sin can therefore not be attributed to a defect in his essence. It can only be understood as a self-contradiction, made possible by the fact of his freedom but not following necessarily from it.
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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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No nation can say, 'We will capitulate to tyranny rather than accept a speculative fate - to accept an absolute fate in alternative to a speculative one' - no nation can do that.
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Certainly, anybody who says, in the eyes of God, is pretentious.
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Faith is the final triumph over incongruity, the final assertion of the meaningfulness of existence.
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A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.
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All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.
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To be religious is not to feel, but to be.
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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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I'm not afraid of too many things, and I got that invincible kind of attitude from my father.
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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.
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The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.
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Great talents have some admirers, but few friends.
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Religion mustn't interfere with the state - so one of the basic Democratic principles as we know it in America is the separation of church and state.
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The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men.
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The Communists do have a god, the Dialectic of History, which guarantees everything that they're going to do and guarantees them victory that's why they're fanatic.
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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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We have previously suggested that philanthropy combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice.
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