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

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.

The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.

There was a time when I had all the answers. My real growth began when I discovered that the questions to which I had the answers were not the important questions.

Life has no meaning except in terms of responsibility.

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

Every experience proves that the real problem of our existence lies in the fact that we ought to love one another, but do not.

I think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.

Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed.

Toleration of people who differ in convictions and habits requires a residual awareness of the complexity of truth and the possibility of opposing view having some light on one or the other facet of a many-sided truth.

Love is the motive, but justice is the instrument.

Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life‘s ethical problems.

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.

Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.

Forgiveness is the final form of love.

Rationalism belongs to the cool observer. But because of the stupidity of the average person, they follow not reason, but faith. This naГЇve faith, requires necessary illusions and emotionally potent oversimplifications, which are provided by the myth maker to keep the ordinary person on course.

If we can find God only as he is revealed in nature we have no moral God.

Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt. It is when we are unsure that we are doubly sure.

The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.

Democracies are indeed slow to make war, but once embarked upon a martial venture are equally slow to make peace and reluctant to make a tolerable, rather than a vindictive, peace.

Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.

Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.

The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.

Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.

If you equate God’s judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.

God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

Humor is a prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer.

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.

If we survive danger it steels our courage more than anything else.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in a lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.

Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.

There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.