This insinuation of the interests of the self into even the most ideal enterprises and most universal objectives, envisaged in moments of highest rationality, makes hypocrisy an inevitable by product of all virtuous endeavor.
Reinhold NiebuhrReason is not the sole basis of moral virtue in man. His social impulses are more deeply rooted than his rational life.
Reinhold NiebuhrReason tends to check selfish impulses and to grant the satisfaction of legitimate impulses in others.
Reinhold NiebuhrNothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.
Reinhold NiebuhrOne of the most pathetic aspects of human history is that every civilization expresses itself most pretentiously, compounds its partial and universal values most convincingly, and claims immortality for its finite existence at the very moment when the decay which leads to death has already begun.
Reinhold Niebuhr