Reinhold Niebuhr
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.Collection: Responsibility
To the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible.Collection: Order
Better not read books in which you make acquaintance of the devil.Collection: Book
Certainly, anybody who says, "in the eyes of God," is pretentious.Collection: Eye
We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization. We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about a particular degree of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimatized.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Dream
The fence and the boundary line are the symbols of the spirit of justice. They set the limits upon each man's interest to prevent one from taking advantage of the other.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Strong
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.Collection: Divorce
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.Collection: Intelligent
I think that the Christian faith is right as against simple forms of secularism. That it believes that there is in man a radical freedom, and this freedom is creative but it is also destructive. And there's nothing that prevents this from being both creative and destructive.Collection: Christian
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."Collection: Religious
Man has always been his own most vexing problem.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Judging
Liberalism makes this mistake in regard to private property and Marxism makes it in regard to socialized property... The Marxist illusion is partly derived from a romantic conception of human nature... It assumes that the socialization of property will eliminate human egotism... The development of a managerial class in Russia, combing economic with political power, is an historic refutation of the Marxist theory.Collection: Wisdom
We have, on the whole, more liberty and less equality than Russia has. Russia has less liberty and more equality. Whether democracy should be defined primarily in terms of liberty or equality is a source of unending debate.Collection: Russia
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.Collection: Self
A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.Collection: Justice
There must be equality of all men before God and in a democratic society. Now that's one of the great achievements.Collection: Men
Man is endowed by nature with organic relations to his fellow men; and natural impulse prompts him to consider the needs of others even when they compete with his own.Collection: Men
Human Beings are just good enough to make democracy possible...just bad enough to make it neccessary.Collection: Democracy
Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life.Collection: Men
It is significant that it is as difficult to get charity out of piety as to get reasonableness out of rationalism.Collection: Charity
Where, but in the simplicity of the Gospel, can you hear about both the dignity of man and the misery of man?Collection: Men
Perhapsthemost sublimeinsights oftheJewishprophets and the Christian gospel is the knowledge that since perfection is love, the apprehension of perfection is at once the means of seeing one's imperfections and the consoling assurance of grace which makes this realization bearable. This ultimate paradox of high religion is not an invention of theologians or priests. It is constantly validated by the most searching experiences of life.Collection: Christian
There are evidently limits to the achievements of science; and there are irresolvable contradictions both between prosperity and virtue, and between happiness and ``the good life,'' which had not been anticipated in our philosophy.Collection: Good Life
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.Collection: Powerful
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.Collection: Wise
What is so funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously. Laughter is the same and healthy response to the innocent foibles of men; and even to some which are not innocent.Collection: Laughter
The more complex the world situation becomes, the more scientific and rational analysis you have to have, the less you can do with simple good will and sentiment.Collection: Simple
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.Collection: Redemption
God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed.Collection: Giving
Men have never been individually self-sufficient.Collection: Teamwork
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.Collection: America
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.Collection: Spring
What is funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously.Collection: Happiness
The fanatic is dangerous.Collection: Dangerous
We ought to really at least recognize the common predicament of Communists and democrats - or Americans, whatever.Collection: Common
The pretensions of final truth are always partlyan effort to obscure a darkly felt consciousness of the limits of human knowledge.Collection: Effort
That is the truth about man - that he has a curious kind of dignity, but also a curious kind of misery, and that these forms of agnosticism don't understand.Collection: Men
We have had to learn that history is neither a God nor a redeemer.Collection: History
My personal attitude toward atheists is the same attitude that I have toward Christians, and would be governed by a very orthodox text: "By their fruits shall ye know them."Collection: Christian
To be religious is not to feel, but to be.Collection: Religious
You can't say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.Collection: Giving
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.Collection: War
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.Collection: Christian
The Jews were the money-lenders of the Middle Ages so there's a stereotype of the slightly or more than slightly dishonest business man and this stereotype covers and obscures all the facts.Collection: Men
The nuclear age has refuted the idea of progress and Marxism has been refuted by Stalinism. Therefore people have returned to the historic religion.Collection: Ideas
[There is] an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groups.Collection: Men