Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes

It is ... difficult to induce a number of free beings to co-operate for their mutual benefit.

Some system of authority is a requirement of all communal living, and it is only the man dwelling in isolation who is not forced to respond, through defiance or submission, to the commands of others.

The multitude which is not brought to act as a unity, is confusion. That unity which has not its origin in the multitude is tyranny.

The more you participate in our common endeavors, the more successful your work in the factory, mine, wharf or village, in an economic institute or in the arts, in commerce or administration, the sooner we will be where we all want to be.

When people say 'let's do something about it', they mean 'let's get hold of the political machinery so that we can do something to somebody else.' And that somebody is invariably you.

Everyone sees they cannot well live asunder, nor many together, without some rule to which all must submit.

The cultivation of sensibility on purely personal lines may, in fact, be the very worst training for a world where only the corporate and the cooperative will matter.

The most powerful men were those who most effectively used the power of adult competence to enforce childish agreements.

Law is any application for the official use of coercion that succeeds.

Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.

Animals when in company walk in a proper and sensible manner, in single file, instead of sprawling all across the road and being of no use or support to each other in case of sudden trouble or danger.

Inasmuch as society cannot go on without discipline of some kind, men were constrained, in the absence of any other form of discipline, to turn to discipline of the military type.

I did say that in-group, authority and purity are necessary for the maintenance of order, but I would never give them a blanket endorsement.

In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.

Humans are humans because we are able to communicate with each other and to organize to do things together that we can't do individually.

Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible, or by the bayonet.

The organization of order is not the exclusive monopoly of the State

In modern societies, all things, even in the military department of affairs, are decided, not by individual effort, but by the combined operations of numbers;

Was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it?

Where men have general rights, and are all guided, as it were, by one mind, it is certain that every individual has the less right the more the rest collectively exceed him in power

Mankind have always wandered or settled, agreed, or quarreled in troops and companies.

The balance between the cooperative and altruistic tendencies and those which are disoperative and egoistic is relatively close. Under many conditions the cooperative forces lose, In the long run, however, the group centered, more altruistic drives are slightly stronger. ... human altruistic drives are as firmly based on an animal ancestry as is man himself.

Human evolution relies on cooperation, which is why identity politics feels so backward.

Good and decent people must be protected and persuaded by gentle means, but the rabble must be led by terror.

In the hands of vicious men, a mob will do anything. But under good leaders it's quite a different story.