Humor is a prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer. Reinhold Niebuhr More Quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr More Quotes From Reinhold Niebuhr That's why history is not an answer to our problem, because history complicates, enlarges every problem of human existence. Now, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries didn't believe this. Reinhold Niebuhr problemanswersbelieve If we can find God only as he is revealed in nature we have no moral God. Reinhold Niebuhr moralifs I think that the achievements of Catholicism on race are very, very impressive. Reinhold Niebuhr achievementracethinking There is no social evil, no form of injustice whether of the feudal or the capitalist order which has not been sanctified in some way or other by religious sentiment and thereby rendered more impervious to change. Reinhold Niebuhr religiousevilorder 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 secular-societydivorcethinking The old prose writers wrote as if they were speaking to an audience; while, among us, prose is invariably written for the eye alone. Reinhold Niebuhr audiencestyleeye Whenever a church does anything for its own group, it has that right. Reinhold Niebuhr groupschurchdoe I think I have one answer, that is partly religious and partly secular; and that is to say, we ought to at least recognize that we and the Russians are in a common predicament. That would be religious in the sense, "Judge not lest you be judged." Reinhold Niebuhr judgingreligiousthinking 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. Reinhold Niebuhr venturedemocracywar The nuclear age has refuted the idea of progress and Marxism has been refuted by Stalinism. Therefore people have returned to the historic religion. Reinhold Niebuhr agepeopleideas 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. Reinhold Niebuhr visionchurchreligious All this talk about atheistic materialism and God-fearing American I think is beside the point; it's a rather vapid form of religion. Reinhold Niebuhr vapidmaterialismthinking I think there is and ultimate answer in a true religious faith, but it doesn't give you any immediate answers, it doesn't. Reinhold Niebuhr religiousgivingthinking 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. Reinhold Niebuhr riskwarorder I might say that the debate between atheists and Christians is rather stale to me, because the Christians say, "You must be a Christian, or you must be a religious man, in order to be good," and the atheists will say, "It's beneath the dignity of a free man to bow his knee to a god, as if he were a sinner," or something like that. Reinhold Niebuhr atheistreligiouschristian Now we're living in a nuclear age, and the science that was supposed to be automatically for human welfare has become a nuclear - a science that gives us nuclear weapons. This is the ironic character of human history, and of human existence, which I can only explain, if I say so, in Biblical terms. Now I don't mean by this reason that I will accept every interpretation of Christianity that's derived from the Bible as many people wouldn't accept my interpretation. But that's what it means for me. Reinhold Niebuhr biblicalcharactermean The Communists do have a god, the Dialectic of History, which guarantees everything that they're going to do and guarantees them victory; that's why they're fanatic. Reinhold Niebuhr communistvictoryguarantees You might get rid of the Bishop and get to the local Ku Klux Klan leader. That, on the whole, has been the fate of certain types of Protestantism. They get under the control of a White Citizens Council while the Catholic Church has an authoritarian system, yes, in which the Bishop expresses the conscience of the whole Christian community and they say there are some things that you can't do on this matter. Reinhold Niebuhr ku-klux-klanfatechristian The churches that are most obviously democratic are most obviously given to race prejudice. I mean the churches that have absolute congregational control. Reinhold Niebuhr churchracemean 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. Reinhold Niebuhr typecausesdifferent
