Richard Niebuhr Quotes & Sayings

Nothing is as evanescent in history as the pansophic theories that flourish among the illuminati of all times under the bright sunlight of the latest scientific discoveries; and nothing can be more easily dismissed by later periods as mere speculation. — H. Richard Niebuhr

The way to the organic, active peace of brotherhood leads through the hearts of peacemakers who will knit together, with patience and self-sacrifice, the shorn and tangled fibers of human aspirations, faith, and hopes, who will transcend the fears and dangers of an adventure of trust. The road to unity is the road of repentance. — H. Richard Niebuhr

We must fight their falsehood with our truth, but we must also fight the falsehood in our truth. — H. Richard Niebuhr

The discussions of the prior generation, shaped by H. Richard Niebuhr's Christ and Culture (see chapter three above), still presumed "gospel" and "culture" as two disparate and divergent categories and realities. An incarnational and pentecostal approach to culture realizes that while distinct, the gospel always comes through culture and that culture can - indeed, must! - be redeemed for the purposes of the gospel. — Amos Yong

Everyone has some kind of philosophy, some general worldview, which to men of other views will seem mythological. — H. Richard Niebuhr

A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross. — H. Richard Niebuhr

Christendom has often achieved apparent success by ignoring the precepts of its founder. — H. Richard Niebuhr

Frequently I remember something H. Richard Niebuhr wrote after having spent a number years trying to formulate a comprehensive perspective on faith. He likens faith to a cube. From any one angle of vision, he points out, the observer can see and describe at least three sides of the cube. But the cube has back sides, a bottom and insides as well. Several angles of vision have to be coordinated simultaneously to do any real justice in a characterization of faith — James W. Fowler

Men are generally right in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny. What we deny is generally something that lies outside our experience, and about which we can therefore say nothing. — H. Richard Niebuhr

It is imperative that the past of the pilgrims' progress be intentionally carried forward into the present as we work into our future. Without it we cannot know who we are, why we are here, or where we can go. Without a common past to live out of we become aimless and wandering individuals instead of a pilgrim people. — H. Richard Niebuhr

Pilgrims are persons in motion passing through territories not their own, seeking something we might call completion, or perhaps the word clarity will do as well, a goal to which only the spirit's compass points the way. — H. Richard Niebuhr

Religion makes good people better and bad people worse. — H. Richard Niebuhr

The great Christian revolutions came not by the discovery of something that was not known before. They happen when someone takes radically something that was always there. — H. Richard Niebuhr