Top 185 Quotes & Sayings by Reinhold Niebuhr
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.
Last updated on September 10, 2024.
If we can find God only as he is revealed in nature we have no moral God.
Democracies are indeed slow to make war, but once embarked upon a martial venture are equally slow to make peace and reluctant to make a tolerable, rather than a vindictive, peace.
The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.
Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.
Forgiveness is the final form of love.
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.
If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.
Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.
The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.
Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.
Evil is not to be traced back to the individual but to the collective behavior of humanity.
The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it.
There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion.
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.
The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.
All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.
Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
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.
Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.
There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.
Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.
Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.
Change what cannot be accepted and accept what cannot be changed.
Cheese, wine, and a friend must be old to be good.
Toleration of people who differ in convictions and habits requires a residual awareness of the complexity of truth and the possibility of opposing view having some light on one or the other facet of a many-sided truth.
The significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all law.
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. There must be a realm of truth beyond political competence, that's why there must be a separation of churches, but if religion is bad and a bad religion is one that gives an ultimate sanctity to some particular cause. Then 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.
There was a time when I had all the answers. My real growth began when I discovered that the questions to which I had the answers were not the important questions.
Whether the man is an atheist or a Christian, I would judge him by his fruits, and I have therefore many agnostic friends.
Rationalism belongs to the cool observer. But because of the stupidity of the average person, they follow not reason, but faith. This naïve faith, requires necessary illusions and emotionally potent oversimplifications, which are provided by the myth maker to keep the ordinary person on course.
The prophet himself stands under the judgment which he preaches. If he does not know that, he is a false prophet.
Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.
[There is] an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groups.
If you equate God's judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.
One of the most pathetic aspects of human history is that every civilization expresses itself most pretentiously, compounds its partial and universal values most convincingly, and claims immortality for its finite existence at the very moment when the decay which leads to death has already begun.
Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life's ethical problems.
Every experience proves that the real problem of our existence lies in the fact that we ought to love one another, but do not.
The stupidity of the average man will permit the oligarch, whether economic or political, to hide his real purposes from the scrutiny of his fellows and to withdraw his activities from effective control. Since it is impossible to count on enough moral goodwill among those who possess irresponsible power to sacrifice it for the good of the whole, it must be destroyed by coercive methods and these will always run the peril of introducing new forms of injustice in place of those abolished.
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our 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. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
Adam Smith's was a real universalism in intent. Laissez Faire was intended to establish a world community as well as a natural harmony of interests within each nation... But the "children of darkness" were able to make good use of his creed. A dogma which was intended to guarantee the economic freedom of the individual became the "ideology" of vast corporate structures of a later period of capitalism, used by them, and still used, to prevent a proper political control of their power.
Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can only be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice. Justice requires that we carefully weigh rights and privileges and assure that each member of a community receives his due share. Love does not weigh rights and privileges too carefully because it prompts each to bear the burden of the other.
Humor is a prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer.
All men are naturally included to obscure the morally ambiguous element in their political cause by investing it with religious sanctity.
Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure.
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." I wouldn't judge a man by the presuppositions of his life, but only by the fruits of his life. And the fruits - the relevant fruits - are, I'd say, a sense of charity, a sense of proportion, a sense of justice. And whether the man is an atheist or a Christian, I would judge him by his fruits, and I have therefore many agnostic friends.
The chief source of man's inhumanity to man seems to be the tribal limits of his sense of obligation to other men.
The history of mankind is a perennial tragedy; for the highest ideals which the individual may project are ideals which he can never realize in social and collective terms.
Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves and who do not probe deeply.
It's always wise to seek the truth in our opponents' error, and the error in our own truth.
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. Grant me the patience with changes that take time, appreciation of all that I have, tolerance of those with different struggles, and the strength to get up and try again, one day at a time.
Self-righteousness is the inevitable fruit of simple moral judgments.
Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument.
Life has no meaning except in terms of responsibility.
All you earnest young men out to save the world. . . please, have a laugh.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen.
Since inequalities of privilege are greater than could possibly be defended rationally, the intelligence of privileged groups is usually applied to the task of inventing specious proofs for the theory that universal values spring from, and that general interests are served by, the special privileges which they hold.
All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.
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