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God give me the serenity to accept things which cannot be changed;Give me courage to change things which must be changed;And the wisdom to distinguish one from the other.
-Reinhold Niebuhr
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The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men.
-Reinhold Niebuhr
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Creation
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The finiteness, the dependency, and the insufficiency of man
-Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Volume 1 Human Nature (Up-per Saddle River, New Jersey:Prentice Hall, 1964), 167
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Danger
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If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.
-Reinhold Niebuhr
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Democracy
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Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
-Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness
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Faith
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Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it.
-Reinhold Niebuhr
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Family
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Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.
-Reinhold Niebuhr
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Fanaticism
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Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.
-Reinhold Niebuhr
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Forgiveness
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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, could 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 own standpoint;
Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.
-Reinhold Niebuhr
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Journalism
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I think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.
-Reinhold Niebuhr
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Justice
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The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
-Reinhold Niebuhr
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Mankind, Man
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Man is both strong and weak, both free and bound, both blind and far-seeing. He stands at the juncture of nature and spirit; and is involved in both freedom and necessity.
-Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Volume 1 Human Nature (Up-per Saddle River, New Jersey:Prentice Hall, 1964), 181
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Power
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The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.
-Reinhold Niebuhr
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Pride
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There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion.
-Reinhold Niebuhr
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Religion
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A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architectural 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.
-Reinhold Niebuhr
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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.
-Reinhold Niebuhr, Interpretation of Christian Ethics, p. 8, 1935
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Serenity
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God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
-Reinhold Niebuhr
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Sin
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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.
-Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Volume 1 Human Nature (Up-per Saddle River, New Jersey:Prentice Hall, 1964), 17
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Books by and about Reinhold Niebuhr