Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes - Page 8

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To the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible.

To the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Order, Effort, Social

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

Thinking, Together, Clubs

Reinhold Niebuhr (2015). “Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics: (Library of America #263)”, p.143, Library of America

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.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Victory, Defeat, Communism

"The Mike Wallace Interview". www.hrc.utexas.edu. April 27, 1958.

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

Reinhold Niebuhr

Book, Devil, Acquaintance

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

Reinhold Niebuhr

Democracy, Problem, Method

Reinhold Niebuhr (2010). “The Irony of American History”, p.13, University of Chicago Press

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.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Responsibility, Bourgeoisie, Behaviour

Reinhold Niebuhr (2012). “An Interpretation of Christian Ethics”, p.81, Westminster John Knox Press

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.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Fate, Alternatives, Accepting

Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

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

Reinhold Niebuhr

Self, Spirituality, Transcendence

Reinhold Niebuhr (1996). “The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation : Human Nature”, p.25, Westminster John Knox Press