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. Reinhold Niebuhr More Quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr More Quotes From Reinhold Niebuhr We judge the Russians because they're living under despotism and we don't like it, but we've gotten into a fix now where we're living in a common predicament, and we ought to recognize this common predicament. Reinhold Niebuhr predicaments judging common All known existence points beyond itself. Reinhold Niebuhr known existence 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. Reinhold Niebuhr arrows depth religion The essence of man is his freedom. Sin is committed in that freedom. Sin can therefore not be attributed to a defect in his essence. It can only be understood as a self-contradiction, made possible by the fact of his freedom but not following necessarily from it. Reinhold Niebuhr essence self men Marxism is the modern form of Jewish prophecy. Reinhold Niebuhr marxism modern form ...(I)ndividual selfhood is expressed in the self's capacity for self-transcendence and not in its rational capacity for conceptual and analytic procedures. Reinhold Niebuhr spirituality transcendence self Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime. Reinhold Niebuhr single-life accomplished lifetime For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions. Reinhold Niebuhr historical desire men We have had to learn that history is neither a God nor a redeemer. Reinhold Niebuhr redeemer history God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed. Reinhold Niebuhr serenity grace giving History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life. Reinhold Niebuhr law may history 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. Reinhold Niebuhr clubs together thinking A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will. Reinhold Niebuhr republic democracy justice Men have never been individually self-sufficient. Reinhold Niebuhr teamwork self men Liberalism makes this mistake in regard to private property and Marxism makes it in regard to socialized property... The Marxist illusion is partly derived from a romantic conception of human nature... It assumes that the socialization of property will eliminate human egotism... The development of a managerial class in Russia, combing economic with political power, is an historic refutation of the Marxist theory. Reinhold Niebuhr russia wisdom mistake Man is always worse than most people suspect, but also generally better than most people dream. Reinhold Niebuhr dream men people Even as rigorous a determinist as Karl Marx, who at times described the social behaviour of the bourgeoisie in terms which suggested a problem in social physics, could subject it at other times to a withering scorn which only the presupposition of moral responsibility could justify. Reinhold Niebuhr bourgeoisie behaviour responsibility The scientific observer of the realm of nature is in a sense naturally and inevitably disinterested. At least, nothing in the natural scene can arouse his bias. Furthermore, he stands completely outside of the natural so that his mind, whatever his limitations, approximates pure mind. The observer of the realm of history cannot be disinterested in the same way, for two reasons: first, he must look at history from some locus in history; secondly, he is to a certain degree engaged in its ideological conflicts. Reinhold Niebuhr two science history History is a realm in which human freedom and natural necessity are curiously intermingled. Reinhold Niebuhr realms humans natural The idea that the profits of capital are really the rewards of a just society for the foresight and thrift of those who sacrificed the immediate pleasures of spending in order that society might have productive capital, had a certain validity in the early days of capitalism, when productive enterprise was frequently initiated through capital saved out of modest incomes. Reinhold Niebuhr income order ideas
