Reinhold Niebuhr
Reinhold Niebuhr
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhrwas an American theologian, ethicist, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. The brother of another prominent theologian, H. Richard Niebuhr, he is also known for having composed the Serenity Prayer, He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. Among his most influential books are Moral Man and Immoral Society and The Nature and Destiny of Man, the second of which Modern Library ranked one of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionReligious Leader
Date of Birth21 June 1892
CountryUnited States of America
Human Beings are just good enough to make democracy possible...just bad enough to make it neccessary.
History is a realm in which human freedom and natural necessity are curiously intermingled.
There are evidently limits to the achievements of science; and there are irresolvable contradictions both between prosperity and virtue, and between happiness and ``the good life,'' which had not been anticipated in our philosophy.
Our dreams of a pure virtue are dissolved in a situation in which it is possible to exercise the virtue of responsibility toward a community of nations only by courting the prospective guilt of the atomic bomb.
A church has the right to set its own standards within its community. I don't think it has a right to prohibit birth control or to enforce upon a secular society its conception of divorce and the indissolubility of the marriage tie.