Universality Quotes

• For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of battle. It has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty.

  John Cheever

  Grief, Rain, Writing

  Accepting National Medal for Literature, en.wikiquote.org. April 27, 1982.

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• An emancipated society, on the other hand, would not be a unitary state, but the realization of universality in the reconciliation of differences.

  Theodor Adorno

  Hands, Differences, Culture

  Theodor Adorno, Richard Leppert, Susan H. Gillespie (2002). “Essays on Music”, p.79, Univ of California Press

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• The notion of a universality of human experience is a confidence trick and the notion of a universality of female experience is a clever confidence trick.

  Angela Carter

  Clever, Experience, Literature

  Angela Carter (2015). “The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History”, p.10, Hachette UK

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• Poetry being the sign of that which all men desire, even though the desire be unconscious, intensity of life or completeness of experience, the universality of its appeal is a matter of course.

  John Drinkwater

  Men, Desire, Matter

  John Drinkwater (1922). “The Lyric: An Essay”, p.35, Library of Alexandria

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• Music is the universal language of mankind.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Music, Appreciation, Teacher

  1835 OutreMer. Also attributed to Christopher North (1865-1954).

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• True universality does not consist in knowing much but in loving much.

  Jacob Burckhardt

  Love, Knowing, Doe

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• Everything must be sacrificed, if necessary, for that one sentiment: universality.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Sentiments, Ifs

  Swami Vivekananda (1963). “Complete Works”

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• It is indisputable that evolved thinking recognizes the universality of Life.

  Vanna Bonta

  Thinking

  Zero Gravity Interview (2006), as quoted in Laura S. Woodmansee "Sex in Space" (p. 76), August 1, 2006.

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• It should not be strange that the values cherished by all the three major religions are the same, since they originate from a common source. For example, Islam, the predominant religion in the Middle East, accepts as an integral part of its religious teachings both the Old and the New Testaments. If this commonality of moral traditions among the world's major religions does not say something about the universality of religion, it does say something about the universality of mankind.

  King Hussein I

  Religious, Teaching, Religion

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• The universality of tattooing is a curious subject for speculation.

  James Cook

  Tattoo, Curious, Speculation

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• That idea of URL was the basic clue to the universality of the Web. That was the only thing I insisted upon.

  Tim Berners-Lee

  Ideas, Clue

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• China recognizes and also respects the universality of human rights. We will continue our efforts to promote democracy and the rule of law.

  Hu Jintao

  Rights, Law, Effort

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• Our purity of taste is best tested by its universality, for if we can only admire this thing or that, we maybe use that our cause for liking is of a finite and false nature.

  John Ruskin

  Taste, Causes, Purity

  John Ruskin (2013). “Selections and Essays”, p.87, Courier Corporation

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• I believe that one of the most sound ideas in dramatic writing is that in order to create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific. Universality, I think, emerges from truthful identity of what is.

  Lorraine Hansberry

  Believe, Writing, Thinking

  Lorraine Hansberry (2012). “Les Blancs: The Collected Last Plays: The Drinking Gourd/What Use Are Flowers?”, p.6, Vintage

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• Plain experience and common sense inform us that no abstract Person can have made us as we are without also wishing to delete us and start over (Gen. 8:21; Zeph. 1:2). Therefore, the existence of cruel and arbitrary nature, together with the universality of human sin, prevents us from beginning the theological enterprise with any concept of God that is distinct from revelation. All theologies of a cosmic harmonic principle shipwreck on the truths of tragedy, catastrophe, and injustice.

  Paul F. M. Zahl

  Common Sense, Starting Over, Together

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• The properties of executability and universality associated with programming languages can be combined, in a single language, with the well-known properties of mathematical notation which make it such an effective tool of thought.

  Kenneth E. Iverson

  Tools, Language, Well Known

  "Notation as a Tool of Thought". Cvommunications of the ACM, 23 (8), (pp. 444 - 465), August 1980.

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• The psychological consequences of this spread of white culture have been out of all proportion to the materialistic. This world-wide cultural diffusion has protected us as man had never been protected before from having to take seriously the civilizations of other peoples; it has given to our culture a massive universality that we have long ceased to account for historically, and which we read off rather as necessary and inevitable.

  Ruth Benedict

  Men, Civilization, White

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• Worship demands the far distances of God; it protests against the little, the near, the material. It must love but it must look up. It cannot live without the note of spirituality and universality, if not mystery. The ascension, the passing of Christ within the veil, answers this need. So does a full-robed Christianity add to definiteness of knowledge the outreach of imagination and home.

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock

  Distance, Home, Imagination

  Maltbie Davenport Babcock (1901). “Thoughts for Every-day Living from the Spoken and Written Words of Maltbie Davenport Babcock”

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• If form follows function, as we know it does in this Universe, then consciousness will adapt to whatever form it requires in order to function. Hopefully, it will also develop its fundamental function; what that is may be debatable within many schools of thought, but it is indisputable that evolved thinking recognizes the universality of Life.

  Vanna Bonta

  School, Thinking, Order

  Zero Gravity Interview (2006), as quoted in Laura S. Woodmansee "Sex in Space" (p. 75), August 1, 2006.

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• The only ‘realistic’ prospect is to ground a new
  political universality by opting for the impossible,
  fully assuming the place of the exception, with no
  taboos, no a priori norms (‘human rights,’ ‘democracy’),
  respect for which would prevent us from ‘resignifying’
  terror, the ruthless exercise of power, the spirit of
  sacrifice … if this radical choice is decried by some
  bleeding-heart liberals as Linksfaschismus, so be it!

  Slavoj Žižek

  Heart, Exercise, Sacrifice

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• Christians are supposed to love each other. Communists are supposed to share bonds with all proletarians and other communists. Every ideological group proclaims universality, and all of them bicker internally, never displaying unity except in the face of a common enemy. Humanism today is the common enemy of Christians.

  Gary North

  Christian, Unity, Enemy

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• According to which principle or hypothesis all the objections against the universality of Christ's death are easily solved; neither is it needful to recur to the ministry of angels, and those other miraculous means which they say God useth to manifest the doctrine and history of Christ's passion unto such, who, living in the places of the world where the outward preaching of the Gospel is unknown, have well improved the first and common grace.

  Robert Barclay

  Mean, Angel, Passion

  Robert Barclay (1850). “An Apology for the Christian Divinity: As the Sameis Held Forth and Preached by the People Called, in Scorm Quakers, Being a Full Explanation and Vindication of Their Principles and Doctrines”, p.47

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• A nation isthe universality of citizens speaking the same tongue.

  Giuseppe Mazzini

  Citizens, Tongue, Nations

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• When a man has displayed talent in some particular path, and left all competitors behind him in it, the world are too apt to give him credit for universality of genius, and to anticipate for him success in all that he undertakes.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Men, Giving, Genius

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.181

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• Do not set out to make Mexican art, or American, Chinese, or Russian art. Think in terms of universality.

  Rufino Tamayo

  Art, Thinking, Mexican

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