Reinhold niebuhr

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

Democracies are indeed slow to make war, but once embarked upon a martial venture are equally slow to make peace and reluctant to make a tolerable, rather than a vindictive, peace.

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

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

If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.

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.

There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.

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

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

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