Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
May
Stumble
Communism
Escape
Nuclear
Terrible
Risk
War
Order
Capitulation

More quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr

Image
The dimension of depth in the consciousness of religion creates the tension between what is and what ought to be. It bends the bow from which every arrow of moral action flies.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
Politics deals with a common-sense approach to the imponderables of history, that I think are obscured by a certain kind of rationalism.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
You can't say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
We misjudge anybody who's different from us and the Jews diverge from our type, ethnically and religiously. That's their chief offense, but there are particular causes.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
Better not read books in which you make acquaintance of the devil.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
Our dreams of bringing the whole of human history under the control of the human will are ironically refuted by the fact that no group of idealists can easily move the pattern of history toward the desired goal of peace and justice. The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
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.
Reinhold Niebuhr
Image
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.
Reinhold Niebuhr