Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Reinhold Niebuhr's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 184 quotes on this page collected since June 21, 1892! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.

  • Marxism is the modern form of Jewish prophecy.

    Modern   Form   Marxism  
  • 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.

    Real   Growth   Important  
  • 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. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

    Reinhold Niebuhr (2010). “The Irony of American History”, p.63, University of Chicago Press
  • Where, but in the simplicity of the Gospel, can you hear about both the dignity of man and the misery of man?

    Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu
  • Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.

    Men   Perfection   Sin  
  • The essence of man is his freedom. Sin is committed in that freedom. Sin can therefore not be attributed to a defect in his essence. It can only be understood as a self-contradiction, made possible by the fact of his freedom but not following necessarily from it.

    Men   Self   Essence  
    Reinhold Niebuhr (1996). “The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation : Human Nature”, p.17, Westminster John Knox Press
  • A church has the right to set its own standards within its community. I don't think it has a right to prohibit birth control or to enforce upon a secular society its conception of divorce and the indissolubility of the marriage tie.

    "The Mike Wallace Interview". www.hrc.utexas.edu. April 27, 1958.
  • We ought to really at least recognize the common predicament of Communists and democrats - or Americans, whatever.

    Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu
  • That is one of the flagrant misconceptions about Catholicism in America that if a man is a Catholic he owes allegiance to what they say a foreign sovereign, or something like that.

    Men   America   Catholic  
    Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu
  • The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.

    Reinhold Niebuhr (2010). “The Irony of American History”, p.63, University of Chicago Press
  • Forgiveness is the final form of love.

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

    Sin   Intention   Humans  
    Reinhold Niebuhr (2015). “Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics: (Library of America #263)”, p.45, Library of America
  • The fanatic is dangerous.

    Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu
  • The cross symbolizes a cosmic as well as historic truth. Love conquers the world, but its victory is not an easy one.

    Reinhold Niebuhr (2015). “Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic: A Library of America eBook Classic”, p.91, Library of America
  • The dimension of depth in the consciousness of religion creates the tension between what is and what ought to be. It bends the bow from which every arrow of moral action flies.

    Arrows   Religion   Depth  
    Reinhold Niebuhr (2012). “An Interpretation of Christian Ethics”, p.8, Westminster John Knox Press
  • Now the ordinary Protestant, Jew or Secularist has a stereotype about Catholicism. It consists of Spanish Catholicism, Latin-American Catholicism and, let us say, a Catholicism of O'Connor's "Great Hurrah." Now there are types of Catholicism like that but this doesn't - this doesn't do justice to the genuine relation that Catholicism has had to Democratic Society.

    Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu
  • A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architec75tural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections.

    Wise   Art   Ignorance  
  • The prophet himself stands under the judgment which he preaches. If he does not know that, he is a false prophet.

    Doe   Judgment   Prophet  
  • Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.

    Life   Finals   Form  
    "The Irony of American History". Book by Reinhold Niebuhr, 1952.
  • Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

    The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness foreword (1944)
  • What is so funny about us is precisely that we take ourselves too seriously. Laughter is the same and healthy response to the innocent foibles of men; and even to some which are not innocent.

    Laughter   Men   Healthy  
  • ...(I)ndividual selfhood is expressed in the self's capacity for self-transcendence and not in its rational capacity for conceptual and analytic procedures.

    Reinhold Niebuhr (1996). “The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation : Human Nature”, p.25, Westminster John Knox Press
  • The idea that the profits of capital are really the rewards of a just society for the foresight and thrift of those who sacrificed the immediate pleasures of spending in order that society might have productive capital, had a certain validity in the early days of capitalism, when productive enterprise was frequently initiated through capital saved out of modest incomes.

    Order   Ideas   Income  
    Reinhold Niebuhr (2013). “Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics”, p.125, Westminster John Knox Press
  • Religion, declares the modern man, is consciousness of our highest social values. Nothing could be further from the truth. True religion is a profound uneasiness about our highest social values.

  • We misjudge anybody who's different from us and the Jews diverge from our type, ethnically and religiously. That's their chief offense, but there are particular causes.

    Causes   Different   Type  
    Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu
  • Whether the man is an atheist or a Christian, I would judge him by his fruits, and I have therefore many agnostic friends.

    Christian   Atheist   Men  
    Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu
  • I think there is and ultimate answer in a true religious faith, but it doesn't give you any immediate answers, it doesn't.

    Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu
  • I might say that the debate between atheists and Christians is rather stale to me, because the Christians say, "You must be a Christian, or you must be a religious man, in order to be good," and the atheists will say, "It's beneath the dignity of a free man to bow his knee to a god, as if he were a sinner," or something like that.

    Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu
  • Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.

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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 184 quotes from the Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, starting from June 21, 1892! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!

    Reinhold Niebuhr

    • Born: June 21, 1892
    • Died: June 1, 1971
    • Occupation: Theologian