“Everyone with any experience of life is aware of the extent to which the characters of people he has known have been given their particular forms by the sufferings through which they have passed. But it is not simply what has happened to them that has defined them; their responses to what has happened to them have been of even greater importance, and these responses have been shaped by their interpretations of what they suffered.”

Source: The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy (1963), pp. 60-61

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H. Richard Niebuhr18

American theologian 1894–1962

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H. Richard Niebuhr18

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