Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes About Justice

Quotes about: Justice

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

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Freedom, Integrity, Adversity

  The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness foreword (1944)

• Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Love Is, Justice, Instruments

• We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization. We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about a particular degree of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimatized.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Believe, Passion, Exercise

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2010). “The Irony of American History”, p.5, University of Chicago Press

• Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can only be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice. Justice requires that we carefully weigh rights and privileges and assure that each member of a community receives his due share. Love does not weigh rights and privileges too carefully because it prompts each to bear the burden of the other.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Life, Rights, Justice

• The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Justice, Politics, World

• 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

  Family, Justice, Spirit

• It is the evil in man that makes democracy necessary, and man's belief in justice that makes democracy possible.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Men, Evil, Justice

• Our dreams of bringing the whole of human history under the control of the human will are ironically refuted by the fact that no group of idealists can easily move the pattern of history toward the desired goal of peace and justice. The recalcitrant forces in the historical drama have a power and persistence beyond our reckoning.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Dream, Drama, Moving

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2015). “Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics: (Library of America #263)”, p.551, Library of America

• 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.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Strong, Justice, Unjust

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2012). “Man's Nature and His Communities: Essays on the Dynamics and Enigmas of Man's Personal and Social Existence”, p.24, Wipf and Stock Publishers

• 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." 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. And 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, Attitude

  "The Mike Wallace Interview". www.hrc.utexas.edu. April 27, 1958.

• We have previously suggested that philanthropy combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Powerful, Justice, Elements

  Reinhold Niebuhr (2015). “Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics: (Library of America #263)”, p.288, Library of America

• The fence and the boundary line are the symbols of the spirit of justice. They set the limits upon each man's interest to prevent one from taking advantage of the other.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Men, Justice, Lines

  Reinhold Niebuhr (1964). “The Nature and Destiny of Man: Human destiny”, Macmillan Reference USA

• Now the ordinary Protestant, Jew or Secularist has a stereotype about Catholicism. It consists of Spanish Catholicism, Latin-American Catholicism and, let us say, a Catholicism of O'Connor's "Great Hurrah." Now there are types of Catholicism like that but this doesn't - this doesn't do justice to the genuine relation that Catholicism has had to Democratic Society.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Latin, Justice, Ordinary

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

• A republic properly understood is a sovereignty of justice, in contradistinction to a sovereignty of will.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Justice, Democracy, Republic

• 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

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