Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes

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 are 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.

We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization. We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about a particular degree of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimatized.

Humour is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer. Laughter must be heard in the outer courts of religion, and the echoes of it should resound in the sanctuary; but there is no laughter in the holy of holies. There laughter is swallowed up in prayer and humour is fulfilled by faith.

The intimate relation between humour and faith is derived from the fact that both deal with the incongruities of our existence. ... Laughter is our reaction to immediate incongruities and those which do not affect us essentially. Faith is the only possible response to the ultimate incongruities of existence, which threaten the very meaning of our life.

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

Whatever increase in social intelligence and moral goodwill may be achieved in human history, may serve to mitigate the brutalities of social conflict, but they cannot abolish the conflict itself. That could be accomplished only if human groups, whether racial, national or economic, could achieve a degree of reason and sympathy which would permit them to see and to understand the interests of others as vividly as they understand their own, and a moral goodwill which would prompt them to affirm the rights of others as vigorously as they affirm their own. Given the inevitable limitations of human nature and the limits of the human imagination and intelligence, this is an ideal which individuals may approximate but which is beyond the capacities of human societies.

Despotism, which we regard with abhorrence, is rather too plausible in decaying feudal, agrarian, pastoral societies. That's why we must expect to have many a defeat before we'll have an ultimate victory in this contest with Communism.

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.

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

Passing one of our big churches today I ran across this significant slogan, calculated to impress the passing wayfarer: 'We Will Go Out of Business. When? When Every Man in Detroit Has Been Won to Christ.' Of course it is just a slogan and not to be taken too seriously, but the whole weakness of Protestantism is in it. Here we are living in a complex world in which thousands who have been 'won to Christ' haven't the slightest notion how to live a happy life or how to live together with other people without making each other miserable [1928].

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

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces.

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.

Perhaps human self hood in it's collective form is unable to imagine any higher value than the common value of it's devotion. Hence, the redemptive value of dissident individuals, the prophet, the critic, even the rebel, in a free community.

There is no level of moral achievement upon which man can have or actually has an easy conscience.

There are no simple congruities in life or history. The cult of happiness erroneously assumes them.