Reinhold Niebuhr Life Quotations

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.

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

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.

Life has no meaning except in terms of responsibility.

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as from our own; therefore, we are saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.

The society in which each man lives is at once the basis for, and the nemesis of, that fulness of life which each man seeks.

Nothing worth doing can be accomplished in a single lifetime.

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.