Skip to content

Insofar as the sense of humour is a recognition of incongruity, it is more profound than any philosophy which seeks to devour incongruity in reason.

— Reinhold Niebuhr Humour and Faith (1945)

Another quote →

Topics

Philosophy

More quotes by Reinhold Niebuhr

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

The Children of Light and The Children of Darkness (1944)

Man is endowed by nature with organic relations to his fellow men; and natural impulse prompts him to consider the needs of others even when they compete with his own.

Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932)

God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.

The Serenity Prayer (1942)

All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.

Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932)

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.

Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932)

All Reinhold Niebuhr quotes →

You may also like

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.

Martin Buber Power and Love (1926)

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.

John C. Lilly The Human Biocomputer (1974)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Reinhold Niebuhr (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.