Quotes from Reinhold Niebuhr

I wonder if anyone who needs a snappy song service can really appreciate the meaning of the cross.

Humor is a prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer.

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

If you equate God's judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.

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

I don't know whether any religious leader would say that we must ultimately win, because we're on God's side. If they do say that, it's bad religion.

Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life's ethical problems.

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

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

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.

Life has no meaning except in terms of responsibility.

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

A genuine faith resolves the mystery of life by the mystery of God.

There was a time when I had all the answers. My real growth began when I discovered that the questions to which I had the answers were not the important questions.

Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.

History may defeat the Christ but it nevertheless points to him as the law of life.

Every experience proves that the real problem of our existence lies in the fact that we ought to love one another, but do not.

The significance of the law of love is precisely that it is not just another law, but a law which transcends all law.

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

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

Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument.

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.

It's always wise to seek the truth in our opponents' error, and the error in our own truth.

I cannot worship the abstractions of virtue: she only charms me when she addresses herself to my heart, speaks through the love from which she springs.