Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes - Page 5

Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life.

Where, but in the simplicity of the Gospel, can you hear about both the dignity of man and the misery of man?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.

Men have never been individually self-sufficient.

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.

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.

The fanatic is dangerous.

We ought to really at least recognize the common predicament of Communists and democrats - or Americans, whatever.

The pretensions of final truth are always partlyan effort to obscure a darkly felt consciousness of the limits of human knowledge.

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.

We have had to learn that history is neither a God nor a redeemer.

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."

To be religious is not to feel, but to be.

You can't say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.

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.

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

The nuclear age has refuted the idea of progress and Marxism has been refuted by Stalinism. Therefore people have returned to the historic religion.