Reinhold Niebuhr

Ultimately evil is done not so much by evil people, but by good people who do not know themselves and who do not probe deeply.

Rationality belongs to the cool observer, but because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith, and the naive faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications which are provided by the myth-maker to keep ordinary person on course.

I wonder if anyone who needs a snappy song service can really appreciate the meaning of the cross.

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

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.

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

The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.

Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.

Religion, declares the modern man, is consciousness of our highest social values. Nothing could be further from the truth. True religion is a profound uneasiness about our highest social values.

Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it.

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.

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

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.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history therefore we must be saved by faith.

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.

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

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