A Quote by Reinhold Niebuhr
Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.
Related Quotes
In order to get the power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness, but with qualities which are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, cruelty.
It's very hard to operate on a general philosophy of power. They say that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, but I don't agree with that. I think you have to be corrupted to be corrupted by power.
Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve
purpose... one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites --- polar opposites --- so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love... What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.
No man deserves to be praised for his goodness, who has it not in his power to be wicked. Goodness without that power is generally nothing more than sloth, or an impotence of will.
Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.
Love is power, the purest power and the greatest power: Love is God. Nothing can be higher than that. But this power is not a desire to enslave others, this power is not a destructive force. This power is the very source of creation. This power is creativity. And this power will transform you totally into a new being. It has no concern with anybody. Its whole concern is to bring your seeds to their ultimate flowering.
It was not power that corrupted people, but fools who corrupted power.
In a fallen world marked by human depravity and deep-seated sin, in a world where Hitler and Stalin had recruited millions of followers to commit mass murder, love must harness power and seek justice in order to have moral meaning. Love without power remained impotent, and power without love was bankrupt.
He possessed the power. He held it in his hand. A power stronger than the power of money or the power of terror or the power of death: the invincible power to command the love of mankind. There was only one thing that power could not do: it could not make him able to smell himself.
Four things are destroyed by the other fours: kindness by ingratitude, strength (of government) by crime, power by power and human love by arrogance.
Where the observer is at first a real goodness realized, later it is a sophisticated power holder. The observer is given power and control that belongs to oneness. When oneness has that power and that control, there is love.
The truth is you are the pure Spirit. The second truth is that there is a all-pervading Divine power of love. This power of love does all the living work.
Without the power of intelligence there is no capacity for spiritual knowledge; and without spiritual knowledge we cannot have the faith from which springs that hope whereby we grasp things of the future as though they were present. Without the power of desire there is no longing, and so no love, which is the issue of longing; for the property of desire is to love something. And without the incensive power, intensifying the desire for union with what is loved, there can be no peace, for peace is truly the complete and undisturbed possession of what is desired.
Power corrupts. If the Church is given too much power, it will become corrupted. So to keep the Church in line with the teachings of Christ, we must make sure that it can never have temporal power. Religion has its place and politics has its own. These two should not be mixed together or the result would be catastrophic.
When love is pure, it has the power to conquer. Lover and beloved conquer each other by their affection. The source, the essence, the fullest manifestation of love's conquering power is the love of the soul for the supreme soul, or God.
Power corrupts and there is way too much corrupted power. Stand up and monitor the government that is supposed to work for us. That's what the Tea Party represents.
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