Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

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• Reinhold Niebuhr:

  Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.

• Reinhold Niebuhr:

  Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance fr

• Reinhold Niebuhr:

  Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spir

• Reinhold Niebuhr:

  There is no cure for the pride of a virtuous nation but pure religion.

• Reinhold Niebuhr:

  Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.

• Reinhold Niebuhr:

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

• Reinhold Niebuhr:

  If we can find God only as he is revealed in nature we have no moral God.

• Reinhold Niebuhr:

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

• Reinhold Niebuhr:

  Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.

• Reinhold Niebuhr:

  Evil is not to be traced back to the individual but to the collective behavior of humanity.