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

  Garry Trudeau

  Expression, Free Expression

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• The man of authentic self-confidence is the man who relies on the judgment of his own mind. Such a man is not malleable; he may be mistaken, he may be fooled in a given instance, but he is inflexible in regard to the absolutism of reality, i.e., in seeking and demanding truth.

  Ayn Rand

  Confidence, Self Esteem, Men

  AYN RAND “THE NEW LEFT: THE ANTI-INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION”

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• The uniting of Orthodoxy with state absolutism came about on the soil of a non-belief in the Divineness of the earth, in the earthly future of mankind; Orthodoxy gave away the earth into the hands of the state because of its own non-belief in man and mankind, because of its nihilistic attitude towards the world. Orthodoxy does not believe in the religious ordering of human life upon the earth, and it compensates for its own hopeless pessimism by a call for the forceful ordering of it by state authority.

  Nikolai Berdyaev

  Religious, Attitude, Believe

  "Nihilism On A Religious Soil". Short story by Nikolai Berdyaev, May 6, 1907.

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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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• For centuries it was never discovered that education was a function of the State, and the State never attempted to educate. But when modern absolutism arose, it laid claim to everything on behalf of the sovereign power....When the revolutionary theory of government began to prevail, and Church and State found that they were educating for opposite ends and in a contradictory spirit, it became necessary to remove children entirely from the influence of religion.

  Lord Acton

  Children, Government, Opposites

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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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• Moral relativism says morality is relative, not absolute, I want to show moral relativism, in its popular form, is logically incoherent.

  Peter Kreeft

  Want, Morality, Form

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• We had principles in mathematics that were granted to be absolute in mathematics for over 800 years, but new science has gotten rid of those absolutism, gotten forward other different logics of looking at mathematics, and sort of turned the way we look at it as a science altogether after 800 years.

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

  Years, Way, Principles

  "President Ahmadinejad Delivers Remarks at Columbia University". www.washingtonpost.com. September 24, 2007.

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• Not only was one cartoonist gunned down, but riots erupted around the world, resulting in the deaths of scores. No one could say toward what positive social end, yet free-speech absolutists were unchastened.

  Garry Trudeau

  World, Speech, Social

  Garry Trudeau's George Polk Awards Speech, www.washingtonpost.com. April 14, 2015.

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