Quotes from Reinhold Niebuhr

Even as rigorous a determinist as Karl Marx, who at times described the social behaviour of the bourgeoisie in terms which suggested a problem in social physics, could subject it at other times to a withering scorn which only the presupposition of moral responsibility could justify.

I regret the immaturity with which I approached the problems and tasks of the ministry but I do not regret the years devoted to the parish.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, no matter how virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.

Religion is a good thing for good people and a bad thing for bad people.

It is fair, therefore, to assume that growing rationality is a guarantee of man's growing morality.

The intelligent man, who exploits available resources for knowledge of the needs and wants of his fellows, will be more inclined to adjust his conduct to their needs than those who are less intelligent.

Perhaps there is no better illustration of the ethical impotency of the modern church than its failure to deal with the evils and ethical problems of stock manipulation. Millions in property values are created by pure legerdemain. Stock dividends, watered stock and excessive rise in stock values, due to the productivity of the modern machine, are accepted by the church without murmur if only a slight return is made by the beneficiaries through church philanthropies [1927].

Men will not cease to be dishonest, merely because their dishonesties have been revealed or because they have discovered their own deceptions. Wherever men hold unequal power in society, they will strive to maintain it. They will use whatever means are most convenient to that end and will seek to justify them by the most plausible arguments they are able to devise.

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

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 one from the other.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is 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 must be saved by love.

Teachers of morals who do not see the difference between the problem of charity within the limits of an accepted social system and the problem of justice between economic groups, holding uneven power within modern industrial society, have simply not faced the most obvious differences between the morals of groups and those of individuals.

it is as difficult to get charity out of piety as to get reasonableness out of rationalism.

that the failure of governments is due to the pressure of economic interest upon them rather than to the "limited capacities of human wisdom.

Absolutism, in both religious and political realism, is a splendid incentive to heroic action, but a dangerous guide in immediate and concrete situations.

Doamne, da-mi senitatea de a accepta lucrurile pe care nu le pot schimba, curajul de a schimba lucrurile pe care pot sa le schimb si intelepciunea de a sti sa le deosebesc.

The church conference begins and ends by attempting to arouse an emotion of the ideal, usually in terms of personal loyalty to the person of Jesus, but very little is done to attach the emotion to specific tasks and projects. Is the industrial life of our day unethical? Are nations imperialistic? Is the family disintegrating?

It is the nature of a business community that it deals with the covert forms of power in economic life and to be insensible to the significance and the complexity of more overt forms of power, even as it is insensible to the motive of the lust for power as an element in human nature.

Men will not cease to be dishonest, merely because their dishonesties have been revealed or because they have discovered their own deceptions. Wherever men hold unequal power in society, they will strive to maintain it.

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 mastery of historical destiny is a tortuous process in which powerful forces may be beguiled, deflected, and transmuted but never simply annulled or defied.

The ice is not very thick; the ocean beneath it is deep and tempestuous; and the sun above is warm and melting.

If superior abilities and services to society deserve special rewards it may be regarded as axiomatic that the rewards are always higher than the services warrant. No impartial society determines the rewards. The men of power who control society grant these perquisites to themselves.

Lord, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.