Latest Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes from Interviews

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

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Judgment, Ifs

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• Certainly, anybody who says, "in the eyes of God," is pretentious.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Eye, Pretentious

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• Where, but in the simplicity of the Gospel, can you hear about both the dignity of man and the misery of man?

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Men, Simplicity, Dignity

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• That is the truth about man - that he has a curious kind of dignity, but also a curious kind of misery, and that these forms of agnosticism don't understand.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Men, Misery, Dignity

  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.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Christian, Religious, Atheist

  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.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Christian, Atheist, Men

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• I wouldn't judge a man by the presuppositions of his life, but only by the fruits of his life. And the fruits - the relevant fruits - are, I'd say, a sense of charity, a sense of proportion, a sense of justice.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Men, Justice, Judging

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• My personal attitude toward atheists is the same attitude that I have toward Christians, and would be governed by a very orthodox text: "By their fruits shall ye know them."

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Christian, Atheist, Attitude

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• I think that when we believe that something is right, there's a serious ambivalence about it. On one hand, you say, because it's right, it must be victorious. On the other hand, you say, it's right whether it's victorious or not. And this is what I believe about a free society.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Believe, Thinking, Hands

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• Ultimately freedom is necessary for a society, because every despotic society - for instance, the Russian society - lives on the basis of a rather implausible dogma - the Marxist dogma of world redemption through Communism.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Redemption, World, Dogma

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• Politics deals with a common-sense approach to the imponderables of history, that I think are obscured by a certain kind of rationalism.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Thinking, Common Sense, Kind

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• No nation can say, 'We will capitulate to tyranny rather than accept a speculative fate - to accept an absolute fate in alternative to a speculative one' - no nation can do that.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Fate, Alternatives, Accepting

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• We have to risk a nuclear war in order to escape capitulation to Communism. For all I know, we may stumble into this terrible war.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  War, Order, Risk

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• We ought to really at least recognize the common predicament of Communists and democrats - or Americans, whatever.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Common, Communist, Predicaments

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• We judge the Russians because they're living under despotism and we don't like it, but we've gotten into a fix now where we're living in a common predicament, and we ought to recognize this common predicament.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Judging, Common, Predicaments

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• I think I have one answer, that is partly religious and partly secular; and that is to say, we ought to at least recognize that we and the Russians are in a common predicament. That would be religious in the sense, "Judge not lest you be judged."

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Religious, Thinking, Judging

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• You can't say that religion or irreligion will give us a particular answer to the nuclear dilemma.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Giving, Answers, Nuclear

  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.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Religious, Thinking, Giving

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• Now we're living in a nuclear age, and the science that was supposed to be automatically for human welfare has become a nuclear - a science that gives us nuclear weapons. This is the ironic character of human history, and of human existence, which I can only explain, if I say so, in Biblical terms. Now I don't mean by this reason that I will accept every interpretation of Christianity that's derived from the Bible as many people wouldn't accept my interpretation. But that's what it means for me.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Character, Mean, Biblical

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• That's why history is not an answer to our problem, because history complicates, enlarges every problem of human existence. Now, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries didn't believe this.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Believe, Answers, Problem

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• I think that the Christian faith is right as against simple forms of secularism. That it believes that there is in man a radical freedom, and this freedom is creative but it is also destructive. And there's nothing that prevents this from being both creative and destructive.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Christian, Believe, Simple

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• All this talk about atheistic materialism and God-fearing American I think is beside the point; it's a rather vapid form of religion.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Thinking, Vapid, Materialism

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• The Communists do have a god, the Dialectic of History, which guarantees everything that they're going to do and guarantees them victory; that's why they're fanatic.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Victory, Guarantees, Communist

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• The fanatic is dangerous.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Dangerous, Fanatics

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• I know that the Communists are atheistic and godless, but I don't think that that's what's primarily the matter with them. What's primarily the matter with them is that they worship a false god. That's much more dangerous than when people don't believe anything; they may be confused, they may not have a sense of the meaning of life, but they're not dangerous.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Confused, Believe, Thinking

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu