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About this quote

What does it mean?
Large-scale social cooperation needs some force to ensure compliance.
In plain terms
Big groups need rules enforced by pressure.
What can you take from it?
Recognize coercion is part of order.

Where it applies

  • governance
  • organizing
  • policy

Putting it to work

  • support fair laws
  • understand enforcement

Questions to consider

  • Is force ever necessary for good?
  • Who enforces your rules?

Another view

Voluntary cooperation exists in small groups.

More from Reinhold Niebuhr

  1. Human beings are endowed by nature with both selfish and unselfish impulses.

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  2. The inevitable hypocrisy, which is associated with the all the collective activities of the human race, springs chiefly from this source: that individuals have…

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  3. The society in which each man lives is at once the basis for, and the nemesis of, that fulness of life which each man seeks.

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