Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic Quotes

“I wonder if anyone who needs a snappy song service can really appreciate the meaning of the cross.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic

“The morality of the church is anachronistic. Will it ever develop a moral insight and courage sufficient to cope with the real problems of modern society? If it does it will require generations of effort and not a few martyrdoms. We ministers maintain our pride and self-respect and our sense of importance only through a vast and inclusive ignorance. If we knew the world in which we live a little better we would perish in shame or be overcome by a sense of futility.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic: A Library of America eBook Classic

“This conference on religious education seems to your humble servant the last word in absurdity. We are told by a delightful 'expert' that we ought not really teach our children about God lest we rob them of the opportunity of making their own discovery of God, and lest we corrupt their young minds by our own superstitions. If we continue along these lines the day will come when some expert will advise us not to teach our children the English language, since we rob them thereby of the possibility of choosing the German, French or Japanese languages as possible alternatives. Don't these good people realize that they are reducing the principle of freedom to an absurdity?”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic

“1924 A revival meeting seems never to get under my skin. Perhaps I am too fish-blooded to enjoy them. But I object not so much to the emotionalism as to the lack of intellectual honesty of the average revival preacher. I do not mean to imply that the evangelists are necessarily consciously dishonest. They just don’t know enough about life and history to present the problem of the Christian life in its full meaning. They are always assuming that nothing but an emotional commitment to Christ is needed to save the soul from its sin and chaos. They seem never to realize how many of the miseries of mankind are due not to malice but to misdirected zeal and unbalanced virtue. They never help the people who corrupt family love by making the family a selfish unit in society or those who brutalize industry by excessive devotion to the prudential virtues.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic: A Library of America eBook Classic

“You are supposed to stand before a congregation, brimming over with a great message. Here I am trying to find a new little message each Sunday. If I really had great convictions I suppose they would struggle for birth each week. As the matter stands, I struggle to find an idea worth presenting and I almost dread the approach of a new sabbath. I don’t know whether I can ever accustom myself to the task of bringing light and inspiration in regular weekly installments. How in the world can you reconcile the inevitability of Sunday and its task with the moods and caprices of the soul? The prophet speaks only when he is inspired. The parish preacher must speak whether he is inspired or not. I wonder whether it is possible to live on a high enough plane to do that without sinning against the Holy Spirit.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic: A Library of America eBook Classic

“The church has lost the chance of becoming the unifying element in our American society. It is not anticipating any facts. It is merely catching up very slowly to the new social facts created by economic and other forces. The American melting pot is doing its work. The churches merely represent various European cultures, lost in the amalgam of American life and maintaining a separate existence only in religion.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic: A Library of America eBook Classic

“I regret the immaturity with which I approached the problems and tasks of the ministry but I do not regret the years devoted to the parish.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic

“... civilization depends upon the vigorous pursuit of the highest values by people who are intelligent enough to know that their values are qualified by their interests and corrupted by their prejudices.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic

“The church conference begins and ends by attempting to arouse an emotion of the ideal, usually in terms of personal loyalty to the person of Jesus, but very little is done to attach the emotion to specific tasks and projects. Is the industrial life of our day unethical? Are nations imperialistic? Is the family disintegrating?”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic: A Library of America eBook Classic

“What we think of man and God, of sin and salvation, is partly prompted by the comparative comforts or discomforts in which we live. It is a very sobering reflection on the lack of transcendence of the human spirit over the flux of historical change.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, LEAVES FROM THE NOTE BOOK OF A TAMED CYNIC

“Great achievement! I learn how to be tolerant when I become the victim of somebody else's spiritual pride [1928].”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic

“Passing one of our big churches today I ran across this significant slogan, calculated to impress the passing wayfarer: 'We Will Go Out of Business. When? When Every Man in Detroit Has Been Won to Christ.' Of course it is just a slogan and not to be taken too seriously, but the whole weakness of Protestantism is in it. Here we are living in a complex world in which thousands who have been 'won to Christ' haven't the slightest notion how to live a happy life or how to live together with other people without making each other miserable [1928].”
― Reinhold Niebuhr, Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic