Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
We misjudge anybody who's different from us and the Jews diverge from our type, ethnically and religiously. That's their chief offense, but there are particular causes.
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."
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.
Politics deals with a common-sense approach to the imponderables of history, that I think are obscured by a certain kind of rationalism.
That is one of the flagrant misconceptions about Catholicism in America that if a man is a Catholic he owes allegiance to what they say a foreign sovereign, or something like that.
You can't say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.
I think there is and ultimate answer in a true religious faith, but it doesn't give you any immediate answers, it doesn't.
We have to risk a nuclear war in order to escape capitulation to Communism. For all I know, we may stumble into this terrible war.
The churches that are most obviously democratic are most obviously given to race prejudice. I mean the churches that have absolute congregational control.
The separation of church and state is necessary partly because if religion is good then the state shouldn't interfere with the religious vision or with the religious prophet.
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.
To the end of history, social orders will probably destroy themselves in an effort to prove they are indestructible.
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.
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".
Man is always worse than most people suspect, but also generally better than most people dream.
History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life.
...(I)ndividual selfhood is expressed in the self's capacity for self-transcendence and not in its rational capacity for conceptual and analytic procedures.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
I wonder if anyone who needs a snappy song service can really appreciate the meaning of the cross.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
O God give us serenity to accept what cannot be changed courage to change what should be changed and wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
I'm not afraid of too many things and I got that invincible kind of attitude from my father.
Faith is the final triumph over incongruity the final assertion of the meaningfulness of existence.
Man's capacity for evil makes democracy necessary and man's capacity for good makes democracy possible.
The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self-mastery.
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime therefore we must be saved by hope.
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history therefore we must be saved by faith.
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.
