Major Works on Religion and Politics Quotes

“However much human ingenuity may increase the treasures which nature provides for the satisfaction of human needs, they can never be sufficient to satisfy all human wants; for man, unlike other creatures, is gifted and cursed with an imagination which extends his appetites beyond the requirements of subsistence. Human”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics (LOA #263): Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic / Moral Man and Immoral Society / The Children ... History

“The highest type of leadership maintains itself by its intrinsic worth, sans panoply, pomp and power. Of course, there are never enough real leaders to go around. Wherefore it becomes necessary to dress some men up and by other artificial means to give them a prestige and a power which they could not win by their own resources.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics (LOA #263): Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic / Moral Man and Immoral Society / The Children ... History

“Every profession has its traditions and its traditionalists. But the traditionalists in the pulpit are much more certain than the others that the Lord is on their side.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics (LOA #263): Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic / Moral Man and Immoral Society / The Children ... History

“If a minister wants to be a man among men he need only to stop creating devotion to abstract ideals which every one accepts in theory and denies in practice, and to agonize about their validity and practicability in the social issues which he and others face in our present civilization.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, Reinhold Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics (LOA #263): Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic / Moral Man and Immoral Society / The Children ... History