Quotes from Reinhold Niebuhr

All you earnest young men out to save the world please, have a laugh.

Human Beings are just good enough to make democracy possible...just bad enough to make it neccessary.

Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing 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.

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

Tuhan, karuniailah saya ketabahan untuk menerima hal-hal yang tidak bisa saya ubah, Keberanian untuk mengubah hal-hal yang bisa saya ubah, Dan kebijaksanaan untuk membedakan keduanya.

It is my strong conviction that a realist conception of human nature should be made a servant of an ethic of progressive justice and should not be made into a bastion of conservatism, particularly a conservatism which defends unjust privileges.

The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

The same strength which has extended our power beyond a continent has also interwoven our destiny with the destiny of many peoples and brought us into a vast web of history in which other wills, running in oblique or contrasting directions to our own, inevitably hinder or contradict what we most fervently desire. We cannot simply have our way, not even when we believe our way to have the "happiness of mankind" as its promise.

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

However much human ingenuity may increase the treasures which nature provides for the satisfaction of human needs, they can never be sufficient to satisfy all human wants; for man, unlike other creatures, is gifted and cursed with an imagination which extends his appetites beyond the requirements of subsistence. Human

For man as an historical creature has desires of indeterminate dimensions.