A Quote by Reinhold Niebuhr

When a church reaches up beyond its group and tries to enforce its standards upon a society that doesn't accept these standards, and perhaps for good reason, perhaps for bad reason, but anyway this is the problem we face in pluralistic society, that not necessarily every standard that every church tries to enforce upon the society is from the society's standpoint a good standard.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Quote Topics

Accept Anyway Bad Beyond Church Enforce Every Face Good Good Reason Group Necessarily Perhaps Pluralistic Problem Reason Society Standard Standards Standpoint Tries Up

Quote Author

Reinhold Niebuhr
American - Theologian
June 21, 1892 - June 1, 1971

The church can challenge society, but society also challenges the church. That's good. We should be humble enough to be able to accept that.

Blase J. Cupich

A church has the right to set its own standards within its community. I don't think it has a right to prohibit birth control or to enforce upon a secular society its conception of divorce and the indissolubility of the marriage tie.

Reinhold Niebuhr

In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

That's part of the reason why we also need to focus on, how do I give to society, how do I participate in society, how do I make society a better place, because, by the way, it's good for me, but it's also good for all of us in the environment in which we live and work.

Reid Hoffman

The problem is that we as a society simply accept these unrealistic standards: that you have to be thin to be perfect, to be beautiful, to be successful at work and to have a good relationship. And it is making us sick. This self-loathing is crippling women.

Crystal Renn

Since Western society is deteriorating, it has become overrun with immorality, and God is going to judge it, and destroy it. And the only way the black people caught up in this society can be saved is not to integrate into this corrupt society, but to separate from it, to a land of our own, where we can reform ourselves, lift up our moral standards and try to be godly.

Malcolm X

During the first seven years, every society tries to condition the mind - and conditioning means nothing but hypnosis: forcing authority, law, tradition, religion, scripture, the priest, the church, into the innermost unconscious of the child so that from there you can control him.

Rajneesh

Our society is pluralistic. We who accept the privilege of membership in that society agree to respect the people's right to live by their own religious precepts.

Lewis B. Smedes

The caste system may be more highly developed in countries like India or England, but every tier of society in almost every culture tries to dominate a group it perceives as beneath it.

Marlon Brando

In mission, also on a continental level, it is very important to reaffirm the family, which remains the essential cell of society and the Church; young people, who are the face of the Church's future; women, who play a fundamental role in passing on the faith and who are a daily source of strength in a society that carries this faith forward and renews it.

Pope Francis

We do not just strive for a society in which every person has the opportunity to reach their full potential (all parties lay claim to that); we want to build a society in which whatever talents people have, they are rewarded with a comfortable standard of living when they apply them.

Chuka Umunna

It is essential to rear a generation at the very top of society that has all the qualities needed to lead and give the people the inspiration and the drive to make it succeed. In short, the elite.. Every society tries to produce this type. The British have special schools for them: the gifted and talented are sent to Eton and Harrow.

Lee Kuan Yew

Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the Church.

Pope Benedict XVI

Our society has lost confidence in the power of reason, except perhaps scientific reason.

Timothy Radcliffe

[T]here are, at bottom, basically two ways to order social affairs, Coercively, through the mechanisms of the state - what we can call political society. And voluntarily, through the private interaction of individuals and associations - what we can call civil society. ... In a civil society, you make the decision. In a political society, someone else does. ... Civil society is based on reason, eloquence, and persuasion, which is to say voluntarism. Political society, on the other hand, is based on force.