Absolutes Quotes

No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute Knowledge of Fact. ~ Thomas Hobbes

All of us experience, to a greater or lesser extent, a loneliness that results from not having enough anchors, enough absolutes, and enough permanent roots to make us feel secure and stable in a world characterized by transience. ~ Ronald Rolheiser

One of the great weaknesses of standard libertarian theory is that it tends to push too hard by elevating presumptions into absolutes. ~ Richard Allen Epstein

My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees. ~ Douglas Adams

Satire must always accompany any free society. It is an absolute necessity. Even in the most repressive medieval kingdoms, they understood the need for the court jester, the one soul allowed to tell the truth through laughter, ~ Joe Randazzo

It is my belief that there are "absolutes" in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what words meant and meant their prohibitions to be "absolutes." ~ Hugo Black

I can think of few more worthy achievements than keeping a library alive and well for a century. As far as I am concerned, one of the absolute backbones of a free society and a democracy is the library offering access to a treasure house of information to all. ~ Gillian Roberts

Conversion is a work above man's power ... Never think you can convert yourself. If ever you would be savingly converted, you must despair of doing it in your own strength. It is a resurrection from the dead, a new creation, a work of absolute omnipotence ... This is a supernatural work. ~ Joseph Alleine

Children have as much mind to show that they are free, that their own good actions come from themselves, that they are absolute and independent, as any of the proudest of you grown men, think of them as you please. ~ John Locke

[W]e conceive the Devil as a necessary part of a respectable view of cosmology. Ours is a divided empire in which certain ideas and emotions and actions are of God, and their opposites are of Lucifer. It is as impossible for most men to conceive of a morality without sin as of an earth without 'sky'. Since 1692 a great but superficial change has wiped out God's beard and the Devil's horns, but the world is still gripped between two diametrically opposed absolutes. The concept of unity, in which positive and negative are attributes of the same force, in which good and evil are relative, ever-changing, and always joined to the same phenomenon - such a concept is still reserved to the physical sciences and to the few who have grasped the history of ideas. ~ Arthur Miller

There are no absolutes in this world, and there will always be mistakes that are made within brokerage firms; there will always be people who set out to deceive the regulators and even deceive their own senior management. ~ Mary Schapiro

It should be carefully noted that Jesus did not say, "I am one of the equally good ways" or "I am a better way than the others, I am an aspect of truth; I am a fragment of the life." Instead, His claim was absolute, and allegiance to Him as the Savior of the world, was to take precedence over all the claims of men and religions. ~ Walter Martin

Absolute time would exist in a causal structure for which the concept indeterminate as to time order lends to a unique simultaneity, i.e., for which there is no finite interval of time between the departure and return of a first-signal ... ~ Hans Reichenbach

I think stimulus money is an absolute mistake. ~ Rick Scott

If you stick with a vision, it might not all work, but some of it will be absolute genius. To me, 15 minutes worth of absolute genius in a film is so much better than two hours of mediocrity. I would rather pay to see something different like that. ~ Kim Cattrall

Right discrimination is of two kinds analytical and synthetical. The first leads one from the phenomena to the Absolute Brahman, while by the second one knows how the Absolute Brahman appears as the universe. ~ Ramakrishna

But I think it is a serious issue to wonder about the other platonic absolutes of say beauty and morality. ~ Roger Penrose

We live in a world where it has become politically correct to avoid
absolutes. Many want all religions to be given the same honor, and all gods
regarded as equally true and equally fictitious. But take these same
people, who want fuzzy, all-inclusive thinking in spiritual matters, and
put them on an airplane. You will find they insist on a very dogmatic,
intolerant pilot who will stay on the straight and narrow glidepath so
their life will not come to a violent end short of the runway. They want no
fuzzy thinking here! ~ Jack T. Chick

The right of absolute and irresponsible dominion is the right of property, and the right of property is the right of absolute, irresponsible dominion. The two are identical; the one necessarily implying the other. ~ Lysander Spooner

Proverbs are the literature of reason, or the statements of absolute truth, without qualification. Like the sacred books of each nation, they are the sanctuary of its intuitions. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our heavenly Father understands our disappointment, suffering, pain, fear, and doubt. He is always there to encourage our hearts and help us understand that He's sufficient for all of our needs. When I accepted this as an absolute truth in my life, I found that my worrying stopped. ~ Charles Stanley

Every single fact I state in 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is the absolute and irrefutable truth ... Do not let anyone say this or that isn't true. If they say that, they are lying. ~ Dave Kopel

All we know of the truth is that the absolute truth, such as it is, is beyond our reach. ~ Nicholas Of Cusa

Photography's central role is to be the absolute medium of the day. It is fantastic that there is no longer any technical intimidation. ~ Martin Parr

Nothing can be more consoling to the man of God, than the conviction that the Lord who made the world governs the world; and that every event, great and small, prosperous and adverse, is under the absolute disposal of Him who doth all things well, and who regulates all things for the good of his people. ~ Jerry Bridges

As I watched the seagulls, I thought, That's the road to take; find the absolute rhythm and follow it with absolute trust. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

This is a city of absolute enchantment in the literal sense of the word. It loosens all the bonds binding the traveller to his own age and sets him free to live in a past that is vital and crude but never ugly. Herat is as old as history and as moving as a great epic poem - if Afghanistan had nothing else it would have been worth coming to experience this. ~ Dervla Murphy

Also, I had read a book called She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, written by a professor who had gone through transgender surgery, but it took this person well into his thirties to come to terms with the absolute necessity of having to do it. ~ Mercedes Ruehl

Our self (Soul) is maya (an illusion) where it is merely individual and finite, where it considers its separateness as absolute; it is satyam (truth) where it recognizes its essence in the universal and infinite, in the Supreme Self, in paramatman (God). This is what Christ means when he says, "Before Abraham was, I am" (i.e. before Abraham was God, who is the same that is in my soul - I am That.) ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Nor do I think we came from monkeys, by the wayThat's another piece of garbage. What the hell's it based on? We couldn't've come from anything-fish, maybe, but not monkeys. I don't believe in the evolution of fish to monkeys to men. Why aren't monkeys changing into men now? It's absolute garbage. It's absolutely irrational garbage, as mad as the ones who believe the world was made only four thousand years ago, the fundamentalists. ~ John Lennon

The absolute minimum for effective exercise is three times a week on alternate days for at least half an hour. ~ Jane Fonda

There was much that was endearing in this strangely Russian search for absolutes - such as the passion for big ideas that gave the literature of nineteenth-century Russia its unique character and power - and yet the underside of this idealism was a badgering didacticism, a moral dogmatism and intolerance, which in its own way was just as harmful as the censorship it opposed. ~ Orlando Figes

When you talk and think of the Absolute, you have to do it in the relative; so all these logical arguments apply. ~ Swami Vivekananda

I'll tell the only thing I know in this business, I have had the absolute privilege of making movies that I loved when I was a kid and loved my whole life. ~ Thomas Tull

Are you absolutely sure there are no absolutes? ~ Patrick Friar

Some men can be very rude. On the other hand, some clients are absolute angels. One john always brought me a gift every time he came to see me. He brought me a pearl necklace, a ring, a bra or something. But eventually, as much as I really loved all the gifts, he fell in love with me, and he tried to weasel his way into my life. It was too much and I sort of had to 'break up with him. ~ Annie Sprinkle

The mountains were his masters. They rimmed in life. They were the cup of reality, beyond growth, beyond struggle and death. They were his absolute unity in the midst of eternal change. ~ Thomas Wolfe

You have to have a balance and understand that as much as you would like to have absolute control over everything, it's just not realistic. ~ Khoi Vinh

This has always bothered me. If "Change" is the only constant how can we have absolutes? ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

Will suspected Jem was in fact cleverer than he was himself - but he lacked Will's tendency to assume the absolute worst about people and proceed from there. ~ Cassandra Clare

The right of private judgment is absolute in every American citizen. ~ James A. Garfield

If you want a significant man, with absolutes, morality, and meaning, then you must have what the Bible insists upon - that God will judge men justly, and they will not be able to raise their voices because of the base upon which He judges them. ~ Francis Schaeffer

I'm intrigued by fanatics - people who are seduced by the promise, or the illusion, of the absolute. ~ Jon Krakauer

Well-being and happiness never appeared to me as an absolute aim. I am even inclined to compare such moral aims to the ambitions of a pig. ~ Albert Einstein

Absolute justice demands that mens incomes and rewards should ... vary, and that some have more than others-so long as human justice is upheld by the provision of equal opportunity for all. ~ Sayyid Qutb

True and absolute freedom is only found in the presence of God. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion. ~ Joseph Goebbels

I had always thought that the 'good,' and the 'bad' and the 'violent' did not exist in any absolute, essential sense. It seemed to me interesting to demystify these adjectives in the setting of a Western. An assassin can display a sublime altruism while a good man can kill with total indifference. ~ Sergio Leone

In this treacherous world
Nothing is the truth nor a lie.
Everything depends on the color
Of the crystal through which one sees it ~ Pedro Calderon De La Barca

People most strenuously seek to evaluate performance by comparing themselves to others, not by using absolute standards. ~ Leon Festinger

If you depart from moral absolutes, you go into a bottomless pit. Communism and Nazism were catastrophic evils which both derived from moral relativism. Their differences were minor compared to their similarities. ~ Paul Johnson

Be really picky with your hiring, and hire the absolute best people you possibly can. People are the most important component of almost every business, and attracting the best talent possible is going to make a huge difference. ~ Peter Berg

The pet food recall, which was after all just about pets, and treated as if it were an inconsequential matter, was an absolute forerunner of what's going on in China, where 50,000 infants have been sickened because of a contaminated infant formula. So these things are all closely related. You cannot separate the food supply for pets, farm animals, and people, and you cannot separate problems in one area of a country from problems in another area. ~ Marion Nestle

But I recognize no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. ~ Mikhail Bakunin

We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals. ~ Robert Caro

What is freedom? There is no such thing as absolute freedom! ~ Benito Mussolini

Jealous?"
"Maybe."
"No reason. I like my ladies with a pulse. ~ Rachel Caine

The greatest gift a parent can give a child is unconditional love. As a child wanders and strays, finding his bearings, he needs a sense of absolute love from a parent. There's nothing wrong with tough love, as long as the love is unconditional. ~ George W. Bush

If we as Christians do not speak out as authoritarian governments grow from within or come from outside, eventually we or our children will be the enemy of society and the state. No truly authoritarian government can tolerate those who have real absolute by which to judge its arbitrary absolutes and who speak out and act upon that absolute. ~ Francis A. Schaeffer

"All government in essence," says Emerson, "is tyranny." It matters not whether it is government by divine right or majority rule. In every instance its aim is the absolute subordination of the individual. ~ Emma Goldman

One must never allow oneself to acquire an exaggerated sense of one's own importance. There's no necessity to burden oneself with absolutes ~ Ayn Rand

It's quite possible to arrive in the year 2030 where people are no longer dying of poverty. We could actually help lead a global end-not a reduction, but an end-to absolute poverty ... I have always found that a committed, powerful group of leaders, can make a huge difference. ~ Jeffrey Sachs

People say I'm a nice girl saying terrible things. I tend to say the opposite of what I think. You hope that the absolute power of that transcends, and reaches the audience. ~ Sarah Silverman

Well, I have an interest in power. I have an interest in people who find themselves in the position to exercise absolute power. ~ Boyd Rice

The gospel of Jesus Christ must be the bad news of the conviction of sin before it can be the Good News of redemption. The truth is revealed in God's Holy Word; life can be lived only in absolute and disciplined submission to its authority. ~ Charles Colson

The mystery of life is certainly the most persistent problem ever placed before the thought of man. There is no doubt that from the time humanity began to think it has occupied itself with the problem of its origin and its future which undoubtedly is the problem of life. The inability of science to solve it is absolute. This would be truly frightening were it not for faith. ~ Guglielmo Marconi

Absolute morality leads logically to absolute intolerance. ~ Michael Shermer

Marlon Brando was the absolute opposite of everything they told me he was going to be, which is that he was a testy guy who wants to know that he's in control of everything. But, that's not who Marlon was. No matter what he did, the most important thing on his mind was justice. ~ Johnny Depp

Once you depart from the Ten Commandments as being the foundation of right and wrong, you are in a free fall. ~ Randall Terry

We'd had to find each other to finally understand that love could not be controlled. Predictions, assumptions, and absolutes were illusions. My love for him was volatile, uncontrollable, and overpowering, but ... that was love. Love was real. ~ Jamie McGuire

The separation of church and state is extremely important to any of us who hold to the original traditions of our nation. To change these traditions by changing our traditional attitude toward public education would be harmful, I think, to our whole attitude of tolerance in the religious area. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

In fine, a life of good or evil, the hope of Heaven or the despair of Hell, Faustus stands as a reminder that the choice between these two absolutes also falls to us. ~ E.A. Bucchianeri

God does not weigh criminality in our scales. We have one absolute, with the seal of authority upon it; and with us an ounce is an ounce, and a pound a pound. God's measure is the heart of the offender,
a balance which varies with every one of us, a balance so delicate that a tear cast in the other side may make the weight of error kick the beam. ~ James Russell Lowell

As the corruption of our nature shews the absolute necessity of regeneration, so the absolute necessity of regeneration plainly proves the corruption of our nature; for why should a man need a second birth, if his nature were not quite marred in the first birth? ~ Thomas Boston

Theology created the fiction of Satan which represents the revolt if an infinite being against the existence of an absolute infinity, against God. ~ Mikhail Bakunin

Is life a game of yes or no? I wonder about the absolutes that we try to create for ourselves, our relationship, our life choices. We try to make things black and white when sometimes it is much more grey. ~ Savi Sharma

In recent years my understanding of God had evolved into increasingly remote abstractions. I'd come to think of God in terms like Divine Reality, the Absolute, or the One who holds us in being. I do believe that God is beyond any form and image, but it has grown clear to me that I need an image in order to relate. I need an image in order to carry on an intimate conversation with what is so vast, amorphous, mysterious, and holy that it becomes ungraspable. I mean, really, how to you become intimate with Divine Reality? Or the Absolute? ~ Sue Monk Kidd

To the shepherds alone was given all power to teach, to judge, to direct; on the faithful was imposed the duty of following their teaching, of submitting with docility to their judgment, and of allowing themselves to be governed, corrected, and guided by them in the way of salvation. Thus, it is an absolute necessity for the simple faithful to submit in mind and heart to their own pastors, and for the latter to submit with them to the Head and Supreme Pastor. ~ Pope Leo XIII

I usually take a walk after breakfast, write for three hours, have lunch and read in the afternoon. Demons don't like fresh air - they prefer it if you stay in bed with cold feet; for a person who is as chaotic as me, who struggles to be in control, it is an absolute necessity to follow these rules and routines. If I let myself go, nothing will get done. ~ Ingmar Bergman

There is no such thing as absolute free speech; there are only absolute rights of private property. Speech is circumscribed by private property rights. You may deliver a disquisition in my virtual or actual living room only if I permit you to so do. ~ Ilana Mercer

Unless a woman has a decided pleasure and facility in teaching, an honest knowledge of everything she professes to impart, a liking for children, and, above all, a strong moral sense of her responsibility towards them, for her to attempt to enroll herself in the scholastic order is absolute profanation. ~ Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

That though we are certain of many things, yet that Certainty is no absolute Infallibility, there still remains the possibility of our being mistaken in all matters of humane Belief and Inquiry. ~ Joseph Glanvill

I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all. Only I must observe, that the common people conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of which it will be convenient to distinguish them into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common. ~ Isaac Newton

Armies, though always the supporters and tools of absolute power for the time being, are always the destroyers of it too; by frequently changing the hands in which they think proper to lodge it. ~ Lord Chesterfield

One week, one strong. One scared, one bold. I was beginning to understand though, that there were no such things as absolutes, not in life, or in people. Like Owen said, it was day by day, if not moment by moment. All you could do was take on as much weight as you can bear. And if you're lucky, there's someone close enough to shoulder the rest. ~ Sarah Dessen

There are a few absolute no-brainer rules in my world. Real close to the top of this list is: if an Unseelie prince runs from it, I'm going to run from it, too. [said Dani] ~ Karen Marie Moning

What may seem depressing or even tragic to one person may seem like an absolute scream to another person, especially if he has had between four and seven beers. ~ Dave Barry

When love of one's people becomes an absolute, it turns into racism. When love of equality turns into a supreme thing, it can result in hatred and violence toward anyone who has led a privileged life. It is the settled tendency of human societies to turn good political causes into counterfeit gods. ~ Timothy Keller

It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth. ~ Werner Heisenberg

Knights of the spirit; warriors in the cause Of justice absolute 'twixt man and man. ~ Richard Watson Gilder

Socialists will often talk as if some form of superbly equalized destitution were preferable to "maldistributed" plenty. A national income that is rapidly growing in absolute terms for practically everyone will be deplored because it is making the rich richer. ~ Henry Hazlitt

Contemplation is an alternative consciousness that refuses to identify with or feed what are only passing shows. It is the absolute opposite of addiction, consumerism or any egoic consciousness. ~ Richard Rohr

Exercise is an absolute must. Period. That doesn't mean I'm a gym junkie - it just means that I have to get a few days doing something physical a week, even just for my mental sanity. ~ Matthew Hussey

In art there is no absolute good or bad, but it is absolute that there is good and bad. ~ Walter Darby Bannard

If we don't believe in moral absolutes and then we get into a cultural-political debate, how are we going to win? ~ Randall Terry

To assume all the powers is not good for anybody. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. All those experiments have a bad ending. ~ Rafael Correa

In the experimental sciences, the epochs of the most brilliant progress are almost always separated by long intervals of almost absolute repose. ~ Francois Arago

God cannot approve of a system of servitude, in which the master is guilty of assuming absolute power - of assuming God's place and relation towards his fellow-men. ~ Gerrit Smith

In the universe there are only a few absolutes of value; something is valuable because it can be eaten for nourishment or used as a weapon or made into clothes or it is valuable if you want it and you believe it will make you happy. Then it is worth anything as well as nothing, worth as much as you will give to have something you think you want. ~ Susan Orlean

Stuffwise we are not a lean operation. We're the kind of people who, if we were deciding what absolute minimum essential items we'd need to carry in our backpacks for the final, treacherous ascent to the summit of Mount Everest, would take along aquarium filters, just in case. ~ Dave Barry