Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes

...(i)ndividual Selfhood Is Expressed In The Self's Capacity For Self-transcendence And Not In Its Rational Capacity For Conceptual And Analytic Procedures.

The Society In Which Each Man Lives Is At Once The Basis For, And The Nemesis Of, That Fulness Of Life Which Each Man Seeks.

The Dimension Of Depth In The Consciousness Of Religion Creates The Tension Between What Is And What Ought To Be. It Bends The Bow From Which Every Arrow Of Moral Action Flies.

Better Not Read Books In Which You Make Acquaintance Of The Devil.

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.

To The End Of History, Social Orders Will Probably Destroy Themselves In An Effort To Prove They Are Indestructible.

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.

Man Is Always Worse Than Most People Suspect, But Also Generally Better Than Most People Dream.

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.

The Recalcitrant Forces In The Historical Drama Have A Power And Persistence Beyond Our Reckoning.

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.

History May Defeat The Christ But It Nevertheless Points To Him As The Law Of Life.