Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes

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  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

• 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

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

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Love, Politics, Power

  Tags in Goodness, Destroy

• 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

• 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

• 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

• All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Sin, Intention, Human, Consequences

• 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

• 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

• Forgiveness is the final form of love.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Form, Final, Forgiveness

• Forgiveness is the final form of love.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Form, Final, Forgiveness

• Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime,
  Therefore, we are saved by hope.
  Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history;
  Therefore, we are saved by faith.
  Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone.
  Therefore, we are saved by love.
  No virtuous act is quite a virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own;
  Therefore, we are saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in History, Love

  Tags in Salvation, Hope, Faith, Forgiveness

• Forgiveness is the final form of love.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Final, Forgiveness

• Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Democracy

  Tags in Problems, Finding

• 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

• 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

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

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Topics in Nature

  Tags in Self

• 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

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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