Reinhold Niebuhr
Reinhold Niebuhr
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhrwas an American theologian, ethicist, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. The brother of another prominent theologian, H. Richard Niebuhr, he is also known for having composed the Serenity Prayer, He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. Among his most influential books are Moral Man and Immoral Society and The Nature and Destiny of Man, the second of which Modern Library ranked one of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionReligious Leader
Date of Birth21 June 1892
CountryUnited States of America
All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.
As racial, economic and national groups, they take for themselves, whatever their power can command.
The individual or the group which organizes any society, however social its intentions or pretensions, arrogates an inordinate portion of social privilege to itself.
We don't properly discriminate. We never discriminate properly when we're dealing with another group and one of the big problems about religion is that religious people don't know that they are probably as flagrant in these misjudgments as irreligious people.
[There is] an increasing tendency among modern men to imagine themselves ethical because they have delegated their vices to larger and larger groups.
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.
Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful 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.
Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing 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.
Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life.
Man is both strong and weak, both free and bound, both blind and far-seeing. He stands at the juncture of nature and spirit; and is involved in both freedom and necessity.
A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.
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.
All known existence points beyond itself.
Better not read books in which you make acquaintance of the devil.