183 Quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr

Extreme orthodoxy betrays by its very frenzy that the poison of skepticism has entered the soul of the church; for men insist most vehemently upon their certainties when their hold upon them has been shaken. Frantic orthodoxy is a method for obscuring doubt.

What we think of man and God, of sin and salvation, is partly prompted by the comparative comforts or discomforts in which we live. It is a very sobering reflection on the lack of transcendence of the human spirit over the flux of historical change.

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

It is my strong conviction that a realist conception of human nature should be made a servant of an ethic of progressive justice and should not be made into a bastion of conservatism, particularly a conservatism which defends unjust privileges.

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

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

Democracies are indeed slow to make war, but once embarked upon a martial venture are equally slow to make peace and reluctant to make a tolerable, rather than a vindictive, peace.

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.

Great achievement! I learn how to be tolerant when I become the victim of somebody else's spiritual pride [1928].