Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes
The fanatic is dangerous.
Niebuhr, Reinhold. Interview by Mike Wallace. The Mike Wallace Interview, ABC, 27 Apr. 1958.
This is a wonderful quotation which illustrates the polarization which had taken place in America as a result of the slavery issue. Lincoln’s address—which history and most people have adjudged to be such a moderate attempt to find common ground, and which offended many of his constituents because he was compromising and temporizing on the slavery issue—was seen as the radical attacks of a “fanatic”. There is probably no policy that Lincoln or any other President could have followed that would be even marginally acceptable to the slave owners and their economies and the abolitionists and their economies. In the final analysis, slavery was the kind of issue that is not susceptible to compromise. No nation can exist half slave and half free. The Civil War was inevitable unless the South would give up slavery or the North would accept it.
This quotation is often given by those who believe that nothing has really changed regarding the Arabs and non-Islamic Westerners in the last century. While the support of dictators, Israel and support for that democracy, the artificial Western imposed borders, 9-11, or the Iraq war is often cited as the cause of Arab hostility and murderous aggression, as this quotation demonstrates, the problems and attitudes and behaviors existed long before any of these occurred. The borders were not set until after WWI and all the other causes occurred almost 50 years later, Yet there was still the propensity for fanaticism and violence. Sikes actually was one of those who was to determine the Arab borders, making one of the first “suggested” maps of the area for the English.
This statement of the Prophet is often quoted by Yusuf al-Qaradawi and other moderate, modernist Islamic clerics and leaders urging people to eschew terrorism and Muslim fundamentalist extremism.
Lennon was one of the Beatles, the English singing group so popular at the time. However, like so many others, he was outspoken against the Vietnam War and the treatment of the Chicago 7. The Nixon administration tried to have him deported, but failed due to adverse court hearings. However, the FBI assembled a huge file on him because of his anti administration views. Lennon had donated money to an organization organizing a Protest at the Republican National Convention and the FBI tried to argue that he was helping to foment violence. He retained his residency in the U. S. His child was born in America and he himself was assassinated in America. This particular quotation is often used by the critics and opponents of the FBI by pointing out the historically they have treated left wing extremists as dangerous but ignored right wing extremists until the 1970s but even then were much more tolerant of the latter.
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) was an American Reformed theologian, ethicist, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. Niebuhr was one of America's leading public intellectuals for several decades of the 20th century and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964. A public theologian, he wrote and spoke frequently about the intersection of religion, politics, and public policy, with his most influential books including Moral Man and Immoral Society and The Nature and Destiny of Man. The latter is ranked number 18 of the top 100 non-fiction books of the twentieth century by Modern Library. Andrew Bacevich labelled Niebuhr's book The Irony of American History "the most important book ever written on U.S. foreign policy." The historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described Niebuhr as "the most influential American theologian of the 20th century" and Time posthumously called Niebuhr "the greatest Protestant theologian in America since Jonathan Edwards."
