Universality Quotes

• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Without undervaluing any other human agency, it may be safely affirmed that the Common School, improved and energized, as it can easily be, may become the most effective and benignant of all the forces of civilization. Two reasons sustain this position. In the first place, there is a universality in its operation, which can be affirmed of no other institution whatever... And, in the second place, the materials upon which it operates are so pliant and ductile as to be susceptible of assuming a greater variety of forms than any other earthly work of the Creator.

  Horace Mann

  School, Civilization, Two

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• I read the story and reread the story, but I still could not find the universality that the little Irishman had spoken of. All I saw in the story was some Irishmen meeting in a room and talking politics. What had that to do with America, especially with my people? It was not until years later that I saw what he meant ... I began to listen, to listen closely to how they talked about their heroes, to how they talked about the dead and how great the dead had once been. I heard it everywhere.

  Ulysses S. Grant

  Hero, Talking, Years

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• The framework of the artist's ideas is clearly only that which he is forever seeking for universality, and must be far wider than the framework of the ideals of the patriot.

  Sean O Faolain

  Writing, Artist, Ideas

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• The universality of salvation means that it is granted not only to those who explicitly believe in Christ and have entered the Church. Since salvation is offered to all, it must be made concretely available to all.

  Pope John Paul II

  Believe, Mean, Church

  Pope John Paul II (1991). “Encyclical Letter Redemptoris Missio of the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II on the Permanent Validity of the Church's Missionary Mandate”

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• It was never the people who complained of the universality of human rights, nor did the people consider human rights as a Western or Northern imposition. It was often their leaders who did so.

  Vaclav Havel

  Rights, People, Leader

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• Yet is it possible in terms of the motion of atoms to explain how men can invent an electric motor, or design and build a great cathedral? If such achievements represent anything more than the requirements of physical law, it means that science must investigate the additional controlling factors, whatever they may be, in order that the world of nature may be adequately understood.

  Arthur Compton

  Mean, Science, Men

  "The Human Meaning of Science".

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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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• Universality has been severely reduced: it is virtually dead as a concept in most areas of public policy.

  Stephen Harper

  Policy, Areas, Has Beens

  Stephen Harper's Speech to the National Citizens Coalition's Colin Brown Memorial Dinner, 1994.

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• However, as words become particularized, and as men begin - in however small a way - to use them in personal, arbitrary ways, so their transformation into art begins. It was words of this kind that, descending on me like a swarm of winged insects, seized on my individuality and sought to shut me up within it. Nevertheless, despite the enemy's depredations upon my person, I turned their universality - at once a weapon and a weakness - back on them, and to some extent succeeded in using words to universalize to my own individuality.

  Yukio Mishima

  Art, Men, Individuality

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• Morality is neither rational nor absolute nor natural. World has known many moral systems, each of which advances claims universality; all moral systems are therefore particular, serving a specific purpose for their propagators or creators, and enforcing a certain regime that disciplines human beings for social life by narrowing our perspectives and limiting our horizons.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Discipline, Perspective, Horizon

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• I didn't want to tell the story of what makes two people come together, although that's a theme of great power and universality. I wanted to find out what it takes for two people to stay together for fifty years -- or more. I wanted to tell not the story of courtship, but the story of marriage.

  Diana Gabaldon

  Years, Two, People

  Diana Gabaldon (2015). “The Outlandish Companion (Revised and Updated): Companion to Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, and Drums of Autumn”, p.35, Delacorte Press

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• This is what one thirsts for, I realize, after the smallness of the day, of work, of details, of intimacy - even of communication, one thirsts for the magnitude and universality of a night full of stars, pouring into one like a fresh tide.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Stars, Communication, Night

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh (2010). “Gift from the Sea”, p.99, Random House

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• The ethic of Reverence for Life is the ethic of Love widened into universality.

  Albert Schweitzer

  Life, Ethics, Reverence

  Albert Schweitzer (2014). “Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography”, p.237, Henry Holt and Company

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• The arts are not a frill. The arts are a response to our individuality and our nature, and help to shape our identity. What is there that can transcend deep difference and stubborn divisions? The arts. They have a wonderful universality. Art has the potential to unify. It can speak in many languages without a translator. The arts do not discriminate. The arts lift us up.

  Barbara Jordan

  Art, Carpe Diem, Differences

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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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• 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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