Reinhold Niebuhr citations (66 citations, Page 2)

Reinhold Niebuhr: 66 citations0 J'aime

Reinhold Niebuhr Citations

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“Changez ce qui ne peut être accepté et acceptez ce qui ne peut être changé.”

Reinhold Niebuhr

Reinhold Niebuhr: Citations en anglais

“I wouldn't judge a man by the presuppositions of his life, but only by the fruits of his life.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

The Mike Wallace Interview (1958)
Contexte: My personal attitude toward atheists is the same attitude that I have toward Christians, and would be governed by a very orthodox text: "By their fruits shall ye know them." I wouldn't judge a man by the presuppositions of his life, but only by the fruits of his life. And the fruits — the relevant fruits — are, I'd say, a sense of charity, a sense of proportion, a sense of justice. And whether the man is an atheist or a Christian, I would judge him by his fruits, and I have therefore many agnostic friends.

“God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

One of the most commonly quoted forms.
The Serenity Prayer (c. 1942)
Variante: Lord, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change,
he courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

“Forgiveness is the final form of love.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

“Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves and who do not probe deeply.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

“comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

Source: The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses

“Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

“The society in which each man lives is at once the basis for, and the nemesis of, that fulness of life which each man seeks.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

Source: (1932), p.1

“This insinuation of the interests of the self into even the most ideal enterprises and most universal objectives, envisaged in moments of highest rationality, makes hypocrisy an inevitable by product of all virtuous endeavor.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

Source: (1932), p.45

“An irrevocable defeat of a socio-historical cause which gives meaning to the life of the individual must create a complete sense of meaninglessness unless the individual is sustained by a religion which interprets such defeats from the aspect of the eternal.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

vol. 1, p. 69
The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation (1941)

“The extension of human sympathies [toward ever-larger communities] has… resulted in the creation of larger units of conflict without abolishing conflict. So civilization has become a device for delegating the vices of individuals to larger and larger communities.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

Source: (1932), p. 49

“The will-to-live becomes the will-to-power.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

Source: (1932), p.1

“A Nazi social philosophy has been a covert presumption of the whole Oxford group enterprise from the very beginning.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

Source: Christianity and Power Politics (1936), Chapter 29: "Hitler and Buchman"

“The Oxford group movement, imagining itself the mediator of Christ's salvation in a catastrophic age, is really an additional evidence of the decay in which we stand. Its religion manages to combine bourgeois complacency with Christian contrition in a manner which makes the former dominant. Its morality is a religious expression of a decadent individualism. Far from offering us a way out of our difficulties it adds to the general confusion. This is not the gospel's message of judgement and hope to the world. It is bourgeois optimism, individualism and moralism expressing itself in the guise of religion. No wonder the rather jittery plutocrats of our day open their spacious summer homes to its message!”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

Source: Christianity and Power Politics (1936), Chapter 29: "Hitler and Buchman"

“Reason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

Source: (1932), p.29

“Human beings are endowed by nature with both selfish and unselfish impulses.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

Source: (1932), p.25

“There is no level of moral achievement upon which man can have or actually has an easy conscience.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

vol. 1, p. 131
The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation (1941)

“The measure of our rationality determines the degree of vividness with which we appreciate the needs of other life, the extent to which we become conscious of the real character of our own motives and impulses, the ability to harmonize conflicting impulses in our own life and in society, and the capacity to choose adequate means for approved ends.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

Source: (1932), pp. 27-28

“Our dreams of a pure virtue are dissolved in a situation in which it is possible to exercise the virtue of responsibility toward a community of nations only by courting the prospective guilt of the atomic bomb.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

The Irony of American History (1952)

“Man is endowed by nature with organic relations to his fellow men; and natural impulse prompts him to consider the needs of others even when they compete with his own.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

Source: (1932), p.2

“The final sin of man, said Luther truly, is his unwillingness to concede that he is a sinner. The significant contribution of modern culture to this perennial human inclination lies in the number of plausible reasons which it was able to adduce in support of man's good opinion of himself.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

vol. 1, p. 121
The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation (1941)

“While it is possible for intelligence to increase the range of benevolent impulse, and thus prompt a human being to consider the needs and rights of other than those to whom he is bound by organic and physical relationship, there are definite limits in the capacity of ordinary mortals which makes it impossible for them to grant to others what they claim for themselves.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

Source: (1932), p.3

“We Protestants ought to humbly confess that the theater and the sports have done more for race amity, for race understanding than, on the whole, the Protestant Church in certain type, in certain parts of the nation.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

The Mike Wallace Interview (1958)

“[The value and dignity of the individual] is threatened whenever it is assumed that individual desires, hopes and ideals can be fitted with frictionless harmony into the collective purposes of man. The individual is not discrete. He cannot find his fulfillment outside of the community; but he also cannot find fulfillment completely within society. In so far as he finds fulfillment within society he must abate his individual ambitions. He must 'die to self' if he would truly live. In so far as he finds fulfillment beyond every historical community he lives his life in painful tension with even the best community, sometimes achieving standards of conduct which defy the standards of the community with a resolute "we must obey God rather than man."”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

The Irony of American History (1952)

“The stupidity of the average man will permit the oligarch, whether economic or political, to hide his real purposes from the scrutiny of his fellows and to withdraw his activities from effective control. Since it is impossible to count on enough moral goodwill among those who possess irresponsible power to sacrifice it for the good of the whole, it must be destroyed by coercive methods and these will always run the peril of introducing new forms of injustice in place of those abolished.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

Source: (1932), p.21

“Reason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

Source: (1932), p.26

“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.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

Niebuhr's preferred form, as declared by his widow
The Serenity Prayer (c. 1942)
Variante: 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.

“The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

As quoted in obituary '"Reinhold Niebuhr Is Dead; Protestant Theologian, 78" by Alden Whitman in The New York Times (2 June 1971) http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/niebuhr.pdf

“Despotism, which we regard with abhorrence, is rather too plausible in decaying feudal, agrarian, pastoral societies. That's why we must expect to have many a defeat before we'll have an ultimate victory in this contest with Communism.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

The Mike Wallace Interview (1958)

“Not necessarily every standard that every church tries to enforce upon the society is from the society's standpoint a good standard.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

The Mike Wallace Interview (1958)

“The modern man is... certain about his essential virtue... [and since] he does not see that he has a freedom of spirit which transcends both nature and reason... [he] is unable to understand the real pathos of his defiance of nature's and reason's laws. He always imagines himself betrayed into this defiance either by some accidental corruption in his past history or by some sloth of reason. Hence he hopes for redemption, either through a program of social reorganization or by some scheme of education.”

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Reinhold Niebuhr

The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation (1941)