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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
Nuclear
Terrible
Risk
War
Order
Capitulation
May
Stumble
Communism
Escape

More quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr

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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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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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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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For democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.
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I thank heaven I have often had it in my power to give help and relief, and this is still my greatest pleasure. If I could choose my sphere of action now, it would be that of the most simple and direct efforts of this kind.
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Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.
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Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it.
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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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[There is] an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groups.
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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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The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.
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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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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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Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves and who do not probe deeply.
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Since inequalities of privilege are greater than could possibly be defended rationally, the intelligence of privileged groups is usually applied to the task of inventing specious proofs for the theory that universal values spring from, and that general interests are served by, the special privileges which they hold.
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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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One of the fundamental points about religious humility is you say you don't know about the ultimate judgment. It's beyond your judgment. And if you equate God's judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.
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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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Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument.
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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.
Reinhold Niebuhr