Our dreams of a pure virtue are dissolved in a situation in which it is possible to exercise the virtue of responsibility toward a community of nations only by courting the prospective guilt of the atomic bomb.

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.

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

The whole art of politics consists in directing rationally the irrationalities of men.

In the Old Testament, the God of the Prophets never was completely on Israel's side. There was a primitive national religion, but it was always a transcendent God who had judgment first in the House of God. This is the true religion. It has a sense of a transcendent majesty and a transcendent meaning so that that puts myself and the foe under the same judgment.

All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.

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.