Quotes About Reinhold Niebuhr

Given their changed context it was also a challenge, one imagines, to keep their biblical exegesis sound and their theological thinking straight. As theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once observed, "It is wonderful what a simple White House invitation will do to dull the critical faculties." 156

Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.

We have, on the whole, more liberty and less equality than Russia has. Russia has less liberty and more equality. Whether democracy should be defined primarily in terms of liberty or equality is a source of unending debate.

Power," said Henry Adams, "is poison"; and it is a poison which blinds the eyes of moral insight and lames the will of moral purpose. The

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

The Cold War liberal even discovered the political utility of a civil religion. He was prepared to put aside the secularism and rationalism that, historically, had been among liberalism's defining elements and to seek validation for liberal anticommunism abroad and at home by appealing to theology, most notably that of Reinhold Niebuhr's Christian realism. Niebuhr was notoriously pessimistic, subscribing to a view that stressed the dark side of human nature.

Lamentably, it is a historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.

The new king of the Protestant Establishment, featured on the cover of Time, was Reinhold Niebuhr, a New Yorker and bona-fide intellectual comfortable with nuance and ambiguity who didn't believe in the biblical miracles, including Jesus's bodily resurrection, or even in individual heavenly eternal life.

The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr observed that the Engel decision practically suppresses all religion, especially in the public schools. Engel and other cases did more than anything else over time to arouse the religious Right from its political quietism. Other Americans, too, thought that the justices had lost their minds.20