Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes

• Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Uncategorized

• The pretensions of final truth are always partly an effort to obscure a darkly felt consciousness of the limits of human knowledge.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Uncategorized

• All men who live with any degree of serenity live by some assurance of grace.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Uncategorized

• There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Religion

  Tags in Nation, Pride

• There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Refusal, War, Situations, Consequences

• The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in God, Religion

  Tags in Tendency

• The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Justice, Politics

  Tags in World, Duty

• The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Nature

  Tags in Self

• The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Achievement, Life, Wisdom

  Tags in Serenity

• Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Perfection

  Tags in Sin, Capable, Own, Capacity

• Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Democracy, Justice

  Tags in Necessary, Man

• Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Life

  Tags in Drawing, Faith

• If we can find God only as he is revealed in nature we have no moral God.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in God, Nature

  Tags in Moral, Find

• 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

  Topics in Truth

  Tags in Cynicism, Think, Pretty

• Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Love, Politics, Power

  Tags in Goodness, Destroy

• God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in God, Wisdom

  Tags in Serenity, Accept, Change, Courage

• Had the serenity to accept the things you cannot change; the courage to change the things you can and the wisdom to know the difference.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in God, Wisdom

  Tags in Serenity, Accept, Change, Courage

• Forgiveness is the final form of love.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Final, Forgiveness

• Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Family, Justice, Life, Love

  Tags in Spirit

• Evil is not to be traced back to the individual but to the collective behavior of humanity.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Humanity

  Tags in Individual, Evil, Behavior

Reinhold Niebuhr (29)

Birth:	21st June, 1892
Death:	1st June, 1971
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Editor, Professor, Theologian

About

Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr was an American theologian, public intellectual, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. Starting as a leftist minister in the 1920s indebted to theological liberalism, he shifted to Neo-Orthodox theology in the 1930s, explaining how the sin of pride created evil in the world, and created the theo-philosophical perspective known as Christian realism.

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