Absolute Truths Quotes

The ultimate source is probably the tendency in some of us, part of our psychological inheritance from our far-distant ancestors, the tendency to look for extreme solutions, absolute truths, abstract answers. All fanatics and fundamentalists share this tendency, which is so alien and unpleasing to the rest of us. The theory says they must do such-and-such, so they do it, never mind the human consequences, never mind the social cost, never mind the terrible damage to the fabric of everything decent and humane.
I'm afraid these fundamentalists of one sort or another will always be with us. We just have to keep them as far away as possible from the levers of power. ~ Philip Pullman

There is an old debate," Erdos liked to say, "about whether you create mathematics or just discover it. In other words, are the truths already there, even if we don't yet know them?" Erdos had a clear answer to this question: Mathematical truths are there among the list of absolute truths, and we just rediscover them. Random graph theory, so elegant and simple, seemed to him to belong to the eternal truths. Yet today we know that random networks played little role in assembling our universe. Instead, nature resorted to a few fundamental laws, which will be revealed in the coming chapters. Erdos himself created mathematical truths and an alternative view of our world by developing random graph theory. Not privy to nature's laws in creating the brain and society, Erdos hazarded his best guess in assuming that God enjoys playing dice. His friend Albert Einstein, at Princeton, was convinced of the opposite: "God does not play dice with the universe. ~ Albert Laszlo Barabasi

The only absolute truth is that there are no absolute truths. ~ Paul Feyerabend

There are relative truths, and there are also absolute truths which are the same yesterday, today, and forever - never changing. These absolute truths are not altered by the opinions of men….The Lord has defined truth as being a 'knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.' (D&C 93:24.) God's existence is a reality. Immortality is a reality. These realities will not go away simply because we have different opinions about them. These realities will not be dissolved just because some have doubts about them. ~ Spencer W. Kimball

Tolerance is thin gruel compared to the rapture of absolute truths. It's not surprising that religious people are often better protected by atheists and agnostics than each other. ~ Wendy Kaminer

Just because you feel lost doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong. Feeling certain that you are correct in every decision and situation is an addiction. If you think that the journey of self-discovery will bring you more solid facts and certainties about yourself and the world, you will be frustrated. The more you see, the more lost you will feel. That is natural. The more you discover of yourself, the more confused you will become. This is natural. The wiser you get, the more you will see that there are many paths walked by just as many people, and that just because yours is different from someone else's doesn't mean one of you is wrong. This is natural. Over time, you will develop humility, compassion, and a higher tolerance for confusion. If you allow the feeling of being lost to drive you into a search for absolute truths and correct answers, you may feel more secure when you get there, but in reality, you will be taking a step back. Allow yourself to be lost, and you will see so much more of the forest of your soul than if you beeline back for the trail. Explore. Get lost. Embrace the inevitability of confusion. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Avoid generalizations. As a fiction writer, I distrust absolute truths, homilies, bromides, sound bites, and also shorthand advice of the sort I'm giving. I like specifics, the longhand version of a story in which it takes four hundred pages to answer a single question about a person's character. Literary writers, unless they are writing fairly tales, learn early never to have characters who are polar opposites, one "good," the other "evil." That's not believable. People are more than just good and evil. Intelligent readers will demand that you not reduce people to such simplistic terms, or resolve situations with "Good always conquers evil," "Might is always right," and so forth. And while such resolutions are common in murder mysteries and action stories, they are feeble in literary fiction, which is supposed to reflect subtle truths about the world. Better to be subtle rather than overbearing, subversive rather than didactic. ~ Amy Tan

In the pure mathematics we contemplate absolute truths which existed in the divine mind before the morning stars sang together, and which will continue to exist there when the last of their radiant host shall have fallen from heaven. ~ Edward Everett Hale

Guys who always shined their shoes were usually self-involved asswipes who figure superficiality trumps substance. ~ Harlan Coben

At heart, American conservatives like myself are believers in the Constitution. We believe that the principles embodied in the Constitution are enduring, and that to whatever extent we deviate from them we put our liberties at risk. Our views are consistent because we believe in absolute truths and the essential soundness, even righteousness, of the Founder's vision of government. ~ Sean Hannity

By exclaiming that "there are no absolute truths" the postmodern stance is also claiming that the statement it just made is an absolute truth - trying to have it both ways, rejecting absolutism with absolutism. ~ Gudjon Bergmann

How do I create something out of nothing? And how do I create my own life? I think it is by questioning, and saying to myself that there are no absolute truths. ~ Amy Tan

Nietzsche envisaged a cultural revolution in which our appreciation of language and our conceptions of truth and knowledge would undergo a fundamental transformation. This emphasis on the crucial importance of language does not mean that Nietzsche is guilty of idealism. For him language is a material phenomenon which is rooted in our animal bodily human needs and which has historically evolved. In one of the opening sections of "Human, All Too Human", for example, he attacks philosophers for lacking a historical sense which results in their inability to grasp the fact that the human animal is a creature which is not an 'aeterna veritas' but is one which has 'become'; the same applies to the human faculty of cognition. 'Everything' Nietzsche insists, 'has become. There are no eternal facts, just as there are no absolute truths'. Consequently, he argues, 'what is needed from now on is historical philosophizing, and with it the virtue of modesty. ~ Keith Ansell-Pearson

There is no neutral ground when it comes to the tolerance question. Everybody has a point of view she thinks is right, and everybody passes judgment at some point or another. The Christian gets pigeonholed as the judgmental one, but everyone else is judging, too, even people who consider themselves relativists. ~ Gregory Koukl

Lincoln, and those buried at Gettysburg, remind us that we should pursue our own absolute truths only if we acknowledge that there may be a terrible price to pay. ~ Barack Obama

In academic life you seek to state absolute truths; in politics you seek to accommodate truth to the facts around you. ~ Pierre Trudeau

This Constitutional Republic called America is an historic aberration. Any honest student of history will note that the prevailing socio-economic system is feudalism, where a tiny minority control the vast majority of wealth, power, and resources. In doing so, they have absolute control over the 99% of the population. Power equals control. ~ Howard Nemerov

War should always be the absolute last resort. ~ Joe Biden

Yet, unbelief doesn't see God as the ultimate good. So it can't see sin as the ultimate evil. It instead sees sin as a good thing and thus God's commands as a stumbling block to joy. In believing the devil, I didn't need a pentagram pendant to wear, neither did I need to memorize a hex or two. All I had to do was trust myself more than God's Word. I had to believe that my thoughts, my affections, my rights, my wishes, were worthy of absolute obedience and that in laying prostrate before the flimsy throne I'd made for myself, that I'd be doing a good thing. ~ Jackie Hill Perry

Every significant artist is a metaphysician, a propounder of beauty-truths and form-theories. ~ Aldous Huxley

We believe profoundly in silence-the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. ~ Charles Alexander Eastman

I feel that tennis is an art form that is capable of moving the players and the audience - at least a knowledgeable audience-in almost sensual ways. When I'm performing at my absolute best, I think that some of the euphoria I feel must be transmitted to the audience. ~ Billie Jean King

Jesus being the embodiment of the Truth thus makes everything He says 'essential' and Eternally valid".

~R. Alan Woods [2012] ~ R. Alan Woods

The idea that people can be improved by being offended will finally have to meet the idea (espoused some of the time by some of the same people) that books, popular songs, movies, television shows, sex videos, and so on are "just fiction" or "just art" and therefore exist "for their own sake" and have no influence. To argue that works of art are "only" fictions or self-expressions and therefore cannot cause bad behavior is to argue also that they cannot cause good behavior. It is, moreover, to make an absolute division between art and life, experience and life, mind and body - a division that is intolerable to anyone who is at all serious about being a human or a member of a community or even a citizen. ~ Wendell Berry

It's cool when fashion recycles itself, it's not cool when sustainable living does because it means there was (and is as I write) a period of absolute and possibly irreversible destruction. ~ Cameron Conaway

In absolute incommunicableness it stood apart, a thought, a system of thought which as yet had no symbol in spoken language ~ Fitz Hugh Ludlow

All of us carry around countless bags of dusty old knickknacks dated from childhood: collected resentments, long list of wounds of greater or lesser significance, glorified memories, absolute certainties that later turn out to be wrong. Humans are emotional pack rats. These bags define us. ~ Marya Hornbacher

Only someone who doesn't understand art tells an artist their art somehow failed. How the fuck can art fail? Art can't be graded, because it's going to mean something different to everyone. You can't apply a mathematical absolute to art because there is no one formula for self-expression. ~ Kevin Smith

First off, as has been well stated by many Indigenous Feminists before us, the idea of gender equality did not come from the suffragettes or other so-called "foremothers" of feminist theory. It should also be recognized that although we are still struggling for this thing called "gender equality," it is not actually a framed issue within the feminist realm, but a continuation of the larger tackling of colonialism. So this idea that women of colour all of a sudden realized "we are women," and magically joined the feminist fight actually re-colonizes people for who gender equality and other "feminist" notions is a remembered history and current reality since before Columbus. The mainstream feminist movement is supposed to have started in the early 1900s with women fighting for the right to vote. However, these white women deliberately excluded the struggles of working class women of color and participated in the policy of forced sterilization for Aboriginal women and women with disabilities. Furthermore, the idea that we all need to subscribe to the same theoretical understandings of history is marginalizing. We all have our own truths and histories to live. ~ Erin Konsmo

There is no human relationship that is not based on self-interest ~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

It's so easy for false thoughts to pass through the net of your mind, not being caught, and to become truths. ~ Gillian McAllister

Officiating is trying to do your absolute best with what you've got. ~ Doug Harvey

Children who were very truly pious in a Catholic childhood are apt to retain a nostalgia for the absolute. ~ Sonia Orwell

Christ's enabling power helps us feel happiness and cheer amid mortal gloom and doom. Misfortune and hardship lose their tragedy when viewed through the lens of the Atonement. The process could be explained this way: The more we know the Savior, the longer our view becomes. The more we see His truths, the more we feel His joy. ~ Camille Fronk Olson

He'd have to keep a careful watch on her once the polemen came ashore. These free-spirited Frenchmen, whom he liked well enough, became absolute devils when drunk, their antics so spectacularly sinful they made his most hardened soldiers blush. ~ Laura Frantz

In order to become, to be, to move,
Imagine leaving here, going to a cliff above the sea.
Watch the sea
Dive into the air, down into the sea.
Dive deep toward the bottom.
Feel the entities in the sea, in the cool darkness, the pressure.
Listen and communicate with them.
They know the secret way of escape from here.
Escape into other places far from this planet.
Move up from the sea's depths.
Slant up through the dark clod, up to the warmth.
Move out of the sea's surface, into light.
Travel through the earth's air space, out.
Accelerate toward our star, the sun.
Feel its radiance increase, its energy.
This energy started, maintains us, is us.
Enter the sun's flaming self, be its light,
Be its energy, share the star as you.
Be the sun, shining into space.
Move away on its energy, become greater that this star.
Spread as its light in all directions.
Fill the universe with thee, be the universe.
Be all the stars, the galaxies are your body.
Be empty space spread self to infinity.
Be the creative potential in the empty spaces.
BE the potential, infinite in the absolute zero of nothing. ~ John C. Lilly

Growth of human hair is the absolute blessing for a barber ~ Munia Khan

The methods from which the different non-anarchist parties expect, or say they do, the greatest good of one and all can be reduced to two, the authoritarian and the so-called liberal. The former entrusts to a few the management of social life and leads to the exploitation and oppression of the masses by the few. The latter relies on free individual enterprise and proclaims, if not the abolition, at least the reduction of governmental functions to an absolute minimum; but because it respects private property and is entirely based on the principle of each for himself and therefore of competition between men, the liberty it espouses is for the strong and for the property owners to oppress and exploit the weak, those who have nothing; and far from producing harmony, tends to increase even more the gap between rich and poor and it too leads to exploitation and domination, in other words, to authority. This second method, that is liberalism, is in theory a kind of anarchy without socialism, and therefore is simply a lie, for freedom is not possible without equality, and real anarchy cannot exist without solidarity, without socialism. The criticism liberals direct at government consists only of wanting to deprive it of some of its functions and to call on the capitalists to fight it out among themselves, but it cannot attack the repressive functions which are of its essence: for without the gendarme the property owner could not exist, indeed the government's powers of repression mus ~ Errico Malatesta

The world that we encounter in ordinary experience is one in which we are faced by choices equally absolute, the realisation of some of which must inevitably mean the sacrifice of others. ~ Isaiah Berlin

Beings, likely to be left alone, need to be fortified and furnished within themselves, and educationand thought have tended more and more to regard these beings as related to absolute being ... ~ Margaret Fuller

Human life is under the absolute dominion of two mighty principles, fear and hope, and that any one who can make these serve his ends may be sure of rapid fortune. ~ Lucian Of Samosata

As the highly colored birds do not fly around in the dull, leaden plains of a sandy desert, but amid all the settings of nature's leaves and blossoms, and lights and shades - nature's framework of their picture - so there are truths which do not appear well in arid fields of philosophic inquiry, but which demand the colored air and the bowers of poetry to be the setting of their charms. ~ David Swing

It's all there, it's all waiting. Of course it can be done; it depends upon ourselves.

You say: "But again, we're scattered individuals. Everything's against us. Governments, money, press, television - all the new forces are used against us." All the great forces, all the material powers of the world, you say, are against you. And so they are - you're quite right to feel that.

And I don't underrate them, but I don't despair and you shouldn't despair. Because you, like I, have read something of history. You know something of the record of the achievement of Europeans. And dark as this hour is, it's no darker, it's not as dark as some of the hours you've known in European history.

When everything was cowardice, treachery, and betrayal. And when the Saracen hordes from far outside Europe swept right across that continent, and would've come on over our own Britain too, if they hadn't been stopped. And it didn't only happen once, it's happened more than once.

Small bands of men in resolution, in absolute determination, giving themselves completely and saying "Europe shall live!" And they stood firm and faced the menace to Europe: its values, its civilizations, the glory of its achievement - all those things in mortal danger. And they stood firm, they faced it, they came together, and more and more ran it to their standards, and those hordes were thrown back. Again and again and again, our Europe lived in triumph because the will of Euro ~ Oswald Mosley

My compulsive thoughts aren't even thoughts, they're absolute certainties and obeying them isn't a choice. ~ Paul Rudnick

More cranks take up unfashionable errors than unfashionable truths. ~ Bertrand Russell

And this leads us to a further consideration: if there are different religions - each of them by definition speaking an absolute and hence exclusive language - this is because the difference between the religions corresponds exactly, by analogy, to the differences between human individuals. In other words, if the religions are true it is because each time it is God who has spoken, and if they are different, it is because God has spoken in different "languages" in conformity with the diversity of the receptacles. Finally, if they are absolute and exclusive, it is because in each of them God has said "I. ~ Frithjof Schuon

Definitions must agree, not with egos, but with life. Mr. Burroughs goes on the basis that a definition is something hard and fast, absolute and eternal. He forgets that all the universe is in flux; that definitions are arbitrary and ephemeral; that they fix, for a fleeting instant of time, things that in the past were not, that in the future will be not, that out of the past become, and that out of the present pass on to the future and become other things. Definitions cannot rule life. Definitions cannot be made to rule life. Life must rule definitions or else the definitions perish. ~ Jack London

The problem of society today: An absolute lifestyle of entitlement. People gauge everything by "feeling", meaning whatever they feel like doing or whatever they don't feel like doing. Passion is valued over dedication. Instant gratification is prized over true fulfillment. They don't know that more than feeling; intuition is the better key. They don't know that more than passion; fulfillment and dedication are the better keys. True passion will produce dedication and ultimately - fulfillment. If not, then it should not be called passion; it should just be called a lack of self control/ immaturity. ~ C. JoyBell C.

In Jewish folk music, despair is disguised as the dance. And so, truth's disguise was irony. ~ Julian Barnes

think all young women are cursed with a streak of unrelenting foolishness, and all young men are cursed with a streak of absolute stupidity. He ~ Neal Shusterman

If you say there is no such thing as morality in absolute terms, then child abuse is not evil, it just may not happen to be your thing. ~ Rebecca Manley Pippert

The biggest fear of my life is living. My second biggest fear is dying. ~ Marya Hornbacher

It is true, there could be a metaphysical world; the absolute possibility of it is hardly to be disputed. We behold all things through the human head and cannot cut off this head; while the question nonetheless remains what of the world would still be there if one had cut it off. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche