Tightrope
The stupidity of the average man
will permit the oligarch, whether economic or political,
to hide his real purposes from the scrutiny of his fellows
and to withdraw his activities from effective control.
Since it is impossible to count on enough moral goodwill
among those who possess irresponsible power
to sacrifice it for the good of the whole,
it must be destroyed by coercive methods
and those will always run the peril
of introducing new forms of injustice
in place of those abolished.
—-Reinhold Niebuhr
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr June 21, 1892 – June 1, 1971) was an American 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 second of which Modern Library ranked one of the top 20 nonfiction books of the twentieth century. –Wikpedia
