Urban planning; Buddhist Proverb ("If you can fix it...")

[Fred Shapiro]

On Mon, 9 Aug 2004, Jim Parish wrote:

> Hmm. There may be a Native American prayer of that sort, but what
> you've quoted sounds more like a prayer composed by the theologian
> Reinhold Niebuhr:
> "O God, give us serenity to accept what cannot be changed, courage to
> change what should be changed, and wisdom to distinguish the one
> from the other."
>
> According to Niebuhr's biographer June Bingham, this prayer has been
> adopted as the motto of Alcoholics Anonymous, distributed to WWII
> servicemen by the USO, reprinted by the National Council of Churches,
> and used commercially on Christmas cards.

I have researched the origins of this prayer extensively, and, although
the earliest record of the prayer does attribute it to Niebuhr, none of
the many specific claims made over many years by Niebuhr or AA about its
origins checks out, and I would not be surprised if someday evidence
surfaces that Niebuhr did not originate it.

Fred Shapiro


--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------