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The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of its Traditional Defense QUOTES

The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of its Traditional Defense QUOTES

1 " Humour is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer … Laughter is swallowed up in prayer and humour is fulfilled by faith. "

― Reinhold Niebuhr , The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of its Traditional Defense

2 " The preservation of a democratic civilization requires the wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of the dove. "

― Reinhold Niebuhr , The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of its Traditional Defense

3 " The consistent optimism of our liberal culture has prevented modern democratic societies both from gauging the perils of freedom accurately and from appreciating democracy fully as the only alternative to injustice and oppression. When this optimism is not qualified to accord with the real and complex facts of human nature and history, there is always a danger that sentimentality will give way to despair and that a too consistent optimism will alternate with a too consistent pessimism. "

― Reinhold Niebuhr , The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of its Traditional Defense

4 " Since the survival impulse in nature is transmuted into two different and contradictory spiritualized forms, which we may briefly designate as the will-to-live-truly and the will-to-power, man is at variance with himself. The power of the second impulse places him more fundamentally in conflict with his fellowman than democratic liberalism realizes. "

― Reinhold Niebuhr , The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of its Traditional Defense