Absolutism Quotes - Page 2

• Those who claim absolutism is merely a myth are right that it has been misused simply as a byword for political centralisation.

  Peter Wilson

  Political, Claims, Myth

  Peter Wilson (2002). “Absolutism in Central Europe”, p.13, Routledge

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• The saving principles and doctrines of the Church are established, fixed, and unchangeable.

  James E. Faust

  Church, Principles, Doctrine

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• Muslims stand by their religion entirely. It is a sort of religious absolutism. While Europeans have stopped defending the values of their civilization. They confuse tolerance with relativism.

  Bassam Tibi

  Religious, Civilization, Tolerance

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Out of the house and on my own, I faced the fact I didn't much like who I was. I didn't like my judgmentalism; I didn't like my absolutism. I didn't like my repression of natural empathy, my pinched lack of emotional generosity. How I had been thinking politically had less to do with what was wrong with the world and more to do with what was wrong with me, with my fears and insecurities, failings, weaknesses.

  Steve Erickson

  Emotional, Thinking, Generosity

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The absolutist takes himself to speak to the ages, with the tongue of angels, but the relativist hears only one version among others, the subjectivity of the here and now.

  Simon Blackburn

  Angel, Age, Tongue

  Simon Blackburn (2005). “Truth: A Guide”, p.15, Oxford University Press

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• Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in the smoke of confabulation. There can be no peace on earth without the kind of inner change that brings man back to his "right mind." p. 31

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Peace, Men

  Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (2007). “Gandhi on Non-Violence”, p.31, New Directions Publishing

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• I think most people who call themselves relativists are not, in practice.

  Peter Kreeft

  Thinking, Practice, People

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• At some point free expression absolutism becomes childish and unserious.

  Garry Trudeau

  Expression, Free Expression

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• Freedom should always be discussed within the context of responsibility.

  Garry Trudeau

  Responsibility, Should

  "'Doonesbury’s' Garry Trudeau on free speech, responsible satire and Charlie Hebdo". Garry Trudeau's acceptance speech for George Polk Awards at Long Island University in New York, www.washingtonpost.com. April 14, 2015.

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• As Camille Paglia's success has demonstrated, what is most marketable is absolutism and attitude undiluted by thought.

  Wendy Kaminer

  Attitude, Camille

  Wendy Kaminer (1997). “True Love Waits”, Addison Wesley Publishing Company

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• Moral relativism has a reputation for being compassionate, caring and humane, but it is an extremely useful philosophy for tyrants.

  Peter Kreeft

  Philosophy, Caring, Moral Absolutism

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• Relativity must replace absolutism in the realm of morals as well as in the spheres of physics and biology.

  Thomas Cochrane

  Moral Absolutism, Spheres, Physics

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• It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.

  Emma Goldman

  Fighting, Humanity, Atheism

  Emma Goldman (1915). “Mother Earth Bulletin”

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• Atheism ... in its philosophic aspect refuses allegiance not merely to a definite concept of God, but it refuses all servitude to the God idea, and opposes the theistic principle as such. Gods in their individual function are not half as pernicious as the principle of theism which represents the belief in a supernatural, or even omnipotent, power to rule the earth and man upon it. It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.

  Emma Goldman

  Fighting, Men, Ideas

  Emma Goldman (1915). “Mother Earth Bulletin”

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• The absolutist lays down the law, but the relativist hears only roaring and bawling. Or, when the relativist voice, as it is heard from philosophers such as Nietzsche or James, itself starts to grate and sounds shrill, as it often does, and when the relativist then offers concessions, the absolutist hears only insincerity. The war of words can often turn into a dialogue of the deaf, and this too if part of its power to arouse outrage and fury.

  Simon Blackburn

  War, Law, Voice

  Simon Blackburn (2006). “Truth: A Guide for the Perplexed: A Guide for the Perplexed”, p.20, Penguin UK

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• When one turns from reason to faith, when one rejects the absolutism of reality, one undercuts the absolutism of one's consciousness - and one's mind becomes an organ one cannot trust any longer. It becomes what the mystics claim it to be: a tool of distortion.

  Ayn Rand

  Reality, Mind, Tools

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.35, Penguin

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• One reason for the decline in moral values is that the world has invented a new, constantly changing and undependable standard of moral conduct referred to as "situational ethics." Now, individuals define good and evil as being adjustable according to each situation; this is in direct contrast to the proclaimed God-given absolute standard: "Thou shalt not!"-as in "Thou shalt not steal".

  David B. Haight

  Evil, World, Moral

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• It is sometimes said that one of the casualties of the general suspicion and mistrust that permeated the old Soviet Union was that the distinction between truth and other motivations to believe tended to break down. Upon hearing a purported piece of information, the reaction was not 'Is this true?' but 'Why is this person saying this? - What machinations or manipulations are going on here?' The question of truth did not, as it were, have the social space in which it could breath.

  Simon Blackburn

  Motivation, Believe, Space

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• It is hubris, claim the critics of 'absolutism', to suppose that we could ever even approximate to a true description of how the world anyway is. It is bad faith or 'bullshit', respond 'absolutists', to suppose - as the rhetoric of postmodernism implies - that we could seriously live and act with the thought that truth and value are simply our own projections. An attractive feature of 'ineffabilism', as I see it, is that it evades these accusations.

  David E. Cooper

  Bullshit, World, Hubris

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• But no one can blink at the fact that in this land, and in other lands across the world, there is an epidemic affecting the lives of millions of youth. It is a sickness that comes of a loss of values, of an abandonment of moral absolutes. The virus which has infected them comes of leaderless families, leaderless schools, leaderless communities. It comes of an attitude that says, "We will not teach moral values. We will leave the determination of such to the individual."

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Determination, Attitude, School

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• Above all, creators remain drawn to the age-old paradoxes that philosophy grapples with [and]...that art occasionally resolves...the problem of the one and the many; unity and variety; determinism and freedom; mechanism and vitalism; good and evil; time and eternity; the plenum and the void; moral absolutism and relativism... These are the basic problems of human existence, and as far as we possibly can we arrange things to forget them.

  Frank Barron

  Art, Philosophy, Moral Absolutism

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• The scriptures, for example, discredit an ancient philosophy that has come back into vogue in our day-the philosophy of Korihor that there are no absolute moral standards, that "every man prospers according to his genius, and that every man conquers according to his strength; and whatsoever a man does is no crime" and "that when a man is dead, that is the end thereof".

  D. Todd Christofferson

  Philosophy, Men, Scripture

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• My first fundamental premise of our faith is that God is real and so are eternal truths and values not provable by current scientific methods. These ideas are inevitably linked. Like other believers, we proclaim the existence of the ultimate lawgiver, God our Eternal Father, and the existence of moral absolutes. We reject the moral relativism that is becoming the unofficial creed of much of modern culture.

  Dallin H. Oaks

  Father, Real, Ideas

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• In Europe, where climate change absolutism is at its strongest, the quasi-religion of greenery in general and the climate change issue in particular have filled the vacuum of organised religion, with reasoned questioning of its mantras regarded as a form of blasphemy.

  Nigel Lawson

  Europe, Issues, Climate

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• I want to give moral relativism the good spanking it deserves.

  Peter Kreeft

  Giving, Catholic, Want

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