Best 170 quotes of Reinhold Niebuhr on MyQuotes

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.

Adam Smith's was a real universalism in intent. Laissez Faire was intended to establish a world community as well as a natural harmony of interests within each nation... But the "children of darkness" were able to make good use of his creed. A dogma which was intended to guarantee the economic freedom of the individual became the "ideology" of vast corporate structures of a later period of capitalism, used by them, and still used, to prevent a proper political control of their power.

A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.

Aim for the stars and maybe you'll reach the sky.

All men are naturally included to obscure the morally ambiguous element in their political cause by investing it with religious sanctity.

All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.

All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.

All this talk about atheistic materialism and God-fearing American I think is beside the point; it's a rather vapid form of religion.

All you earnest young men out to save the world. . . please, have a laugh.

A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.

A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architec75tural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections.

Better not read books in which you make acquaintance of the devil.

Certainly, anybody who says, "in the eyes of God," is pretentious.

Cheese, wine, and a friend must be old to be good.

Civilization depends upon the vigorous pursuit of the highest values by people who are intelligent enough to know that their values are qualified by their interests and corrupted by their prejudices.

Democracies are indeed slow to make war, but once embarked upon a martial venture are equally slow to make peace and reluctant to make a tolerable, rather than a vindictive, peace.

Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.

Despotism, which we regard with abhorrence, is rather too plausible in decaying feudal, agrarian, pastoral societies. That's why we must expect to have many a defeat before we'll have an ultimate victory in this contest with Communism.

Even as rigorous a determinist as Karl Marx, who at times described the social behaviour of the bourgeoisie in terms which suggested a problem in social physics, could subject it at other times to a withering scorn which only the presupposition of moral responsibility could justify.

Every experience proves that the real problem of our existence lies in the fact that we ought to love one another, but do not.

Evil is not to be traced back to the individual but to the collective behavior of humanity.

Faith is the final triumph over incongruity, the final assertion of the meaningfulness of existence.

Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.

Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can only be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice. Justice requires that we carefully weigh rights and privileges and assure that each member of a community receives his due share. Love does not weigh rights and privileges too carefully because it prompts each to bear the burden of the other.

For democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.

For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.

Freedom is necessary for two reasons. It's necessary for the individual, because the individual, no matter how good the society is, every individual has hopes, fears, ambitions, creative urges, that transcend the purposes of his society. Therefore we have a long history of freedom, where people try to extricate themselves from tyranny for the sake of art, for the sake of science, for the sake of religion, for the sake of the conscience of the individual - this freedom is necessary for the individual.

God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. This prayer was first printed in a monthly bulletin of the Federal Council of Churches and has become enormously popular. It has been circulated in millions of copies.

Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.

Great talents have some admirers, but few friends.

History is a realm in which human freedom and natural necessity are curiously intermingled.

History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life.

Human beings are endowed by nature with both selfish and unselfish impulses.

Human Beings are just good enough to make democracy possible...just bad enough to make it neccessary.

Humor is a prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer.

Humour is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer … Laughter is swallowed up in prayer and humour is fulfilled by faith.

I cannot worship the abstractions of virtue: she only charms me when she addresses herself to my heart, speaks through the love from which she springs.

I don't know whether any religious leader would say that we must ultimately win, because we're on God's side. If they do say that, it's bad religion.

If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.

I know that the Communists are atheistic and godless, but I don't think that that's what's primarily the matter with them. What's primarily the matter with them is that they worship a false god. That's much more dangerous than when people don't believe anything; they may be confused, they may not have a sense of the meaning of life, but they're not dangerous.

I might say that the debate between atheists and Christians is rather stale to me, because the Christians say, "You must be a Christian, or you must be a religious man, in order to be good," and the atheists will say, "It's beneath the dignity of a free man to bow his knee to a god, as if he were a sinner," or something like that.

I'm not afraid of too many things, and I got that invincible kind of attitude from my father.

...(I)ndividual selfhood is expressed in the self's capacity for self-transcendence and not in its rational capacity for conceptual and analytic procedures.

In the 17th and 18th centuries there was a kind of Protestantism that said, "If you could only get rid of the Bishop, then you'd be a true Christian".

In the Old Testament, the God of the Prophets never was completely on Israel's side. There was a primitive national religion, but it was always a transcendent God who had judgment first in the House of God. This is the true religion. It has a sense of a transcendent majesty and a transcendent meaning so that that puts myself and the foe under the same judgment.

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.

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.

I think I should know how to educate a boy, but not a girl; I should be in danger of making her too learned.

I think that the achievements of Catholicism on race are very, very impressive.