Absolutism Quotes

Philosophically, I believe that libertarianism - and the wider creed of sound individualism of which libertarianism is a part - must rest on absolutism and deny relativism. ~ Murray Rothbard

Moral relativism has a reputation for being compassionate, caring and humane, but it is an extremely useful philosophy for tyrants. ~ Peter Kreeft

As Camille Paglia's success has demonstrated, what is most marketable is absolutism and attitude undiluted by thought. ~ Wendy Kaminer

Above all, creators remain drawn to the age-old paradoxes that philosophy grapples with [and] ... that art occasionally resolves ... the problem of the one and the many; unity and variety; determinism and freedom; mechanism and vitalism; good and evil; time and eternity; the plenum and the void; moral absolutism and relativism ... These are the basic problems of human existence, and as far as we possibly can we arrange things to forget them. ~ Frank Barron

The absolutist parades his good solid grounding in observation, reason, objectivity, truth and fact; the relativist sees only fetishes. ~ Simon Blackburn

There is absolute truth in anarchism and it is to be seen in its attitude to the sovereignty of the state and to every form of state absolutism. [ ... ] The religious truth of anarchism consists in this, that power over man is bound up with sin and evil, that a state of perfection is a state where there is no power of man over man, that is to say, anarchy. The Kingdom of God is freedom and the absence of such power ... the Kingdom of God is anarchy. ~ Nikolai Berdyaev

Absolutism, in both religious and political idealism, is a splendid incentive to heroic action, but a dangerous guide in immediate and concrete situations. In religion, it permits absurdities and in politics cruelties, which fail to achieve justifying consequences because the inertia of human nature remains a nemesis to the absolute ideal...The fanaticism which in the individual may appear in the guise of a harmless or pathetic vagary, when expressed in political policy, shuts the gates of mercy on mankind. ~ Gustav Niebuhr

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

The antagonistic exponents of freedom and absolutism must thus meet at last and then will be fought the mighty battle on which the world will look with breathless interest; for on its issue the freedom or the slavery of the world will depend. ~ Christopher Hitchens

A rejection of absolutism, in all its forms, may sometimes slip into moral relativism or even nihilism, an erosion of values that hold society together, but for most of our history it has encouraged the very process of information gathering, analysis, argument, and persuasion which allows us to make better, if not perfect, choices – not only about the means to our ends, but also the ends themselves. ~ Barack Obama

The only real recourse that [Russian] people had against tsarist rule was violence and rebellion. It was once remarked that Russia's constitution was absolutism moderated by assassination. ~ Alan Beattie

In the wake of the Neoliberal proclamation of the end of class struggle, the only social categories remaining are winner and loser. No more capitalists and workers; no more exploiters and exploited. Either you are strong and smart, or you deserve your misery. The establishment of capitalist absolutism is based on the mass adhesion...to the philosophy of natural selection. The mass murderer is someone who believes in the right of the fittest and the strongest to win in the social game, but he also knows or senses that he is not the fittest or the strongest. So he opts for the only possible act of retaliation and self assertion: to kill and be killed. ~ Franco "Bifo" Berardi

Religion and ethics were not always - or even frequently - mutually compatible. The demands of religious absolutism or fundamentalism or rampaging relativism often deflected the worst aspects of contemporary culture or prejudices rather than a system which both man and God could live under with a sense of real justice. ~ Dan Simmons

… not only the women of the Qurashi aristocracy were highly enough esteemed as a social group to come, like the men, to swear allegiance and to take part in the negotiations with the new military leader of the city, but also that they could express a boldly critical attitude toward Islam. They were not going to accept the new religion without knowing exactly how it would improve their situation. This critical spirit on the part of women toward the political leader remained alive and well during the first decades of Islam. It only disappeared with the onset of absolutism, with Mu'awiya and the turning of Islam into a dynastic system. This meant, on the one hand, the disappearance of the tribal aristocratic spirit with the formation of the Muslim state, and, on the other hand, the disappearance of Islam as the Prophet's experiment in living, in which equality, however merely potential it might be, opened the door to the dream of a practicing democracy. ~ Fatema Mernissi

If we move in the direction of biblial absolutism how can we escape turning the New Testament into a Christian Torah and the gospel into a new law? Once we do that, religious fascism with all its sectarian ugliness cannot be far away. Far better a mistaken Christian (a heretic) who has somehow caught the Spirit of Christ, than an orthodox Protestant who thinks that the Spirit is mediated to him through the letter of correct theology. ~ Robert D. Brinsmead

Theistic absolutism and realism are the basic ontological principles of Kashmir Shaivism. In this philosophy everything that exists is real, and yet is spiritual as well, because everything is the manifestation of an absolute reality, described as pure, eternal, and infinite Consciousness. According to the ancient authors of this philosophy, the essential features of Consciousness are Its infinite, divine, and joyful vitality, and the inclination to manifest Its powers of creation, preservation, dissolution, obscuration, and revelation. The vibrant, creative quality is the divine essence of God. Consciousness is also described as luminous. It illuminates Itself and is always aware of Itself and everything within It.

The ancient masters refer in various ways to this One creative force out of which everything emerges. It is known most commonly as the Ultimate, Absolute Reality, Consciousness, Paramasiva, and God. Yet, according to Kashmir Shaivism, Paramasiva cannot be fully described or clearly thought over because, being infinite in nature, He cannot be confined to any thinking or speaking ability. No words can fully describe Him, no mind can correctly think about Him, and no understanding can perfectly understand Him. This is His absoluteness, and Kashmir Shaivism considers this absoluteness to be one of His key attributes. Because the Absolute cannot be fathomed with the intellect or through ordinary logical reasoning and philosophical speculation, the ancient ma ~ Balajinnatha Pandita

The law of love is the ultimate law because it is the negation of law; it is absolute because it concerns everything concrete. The paradox of final revelation, overcoming the conflict between absolutism and relativism, is love. ~ Paul Tillich

produced a race of heroes, so not less surely did the growth of luxury and absolutism, assisted by the narrow-mindedness of a dynasty of bigots, lose for Portugal the lofty place which her heroes had won for her. These are things well worth pondering upon and lessons well worth learning, for the great value of the study of history is in teaching such truths as these - truths which are eternal, while nations wax and wane. The ~ H. Morse Stephens

Where does it all begin? History has no beginnings, for everything that happens becomes the cause or pretext for what occurs afterwards, and this chain of cause and pretext stretches back to the Palaeolithic age, when the first Cain of one tribe murdered the first Abel of another. All war is fratricide, and there is therefore an infinite chain of blame that winds its circuitous route back and forth across the path and under the feet of every people and every nation, so that a people who are the victims of one time become the victimisers a generation later, and newly liberated nations resort immediately to the means of their former oppressors. The triple contagions of nationalism, utopianism and religious absolutism effervesce together into an acid that corrodes the moral metal of a race, and it shamelessly and even proudly performs deeds that it would deem vile if they were done by any other. ~ Louis De Bernieres

Every step which leads from capitalism toward planning is necessarily a step nearer to absolutism and dictatorship. The ~ Ludwig Von Mises

I have no intention of sharing my authority. ~ Louis XVI Of France

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

As liberals, men like Richter viewed socialism as the great modern counter-revolution, and believed that the achievement of the socialist goal would lead both to appalling poverty and state absolutism. There was nothing in the socialist doctrine of the time that would suggest otherwise. ~ Ralph Raico

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

Responsibility I believe accrues through privilege. People like you and me have an unbelievable amount of privilege and therefore we have a huge amount of responsibility. We live in free societies where we are not afraid of the police; we have extraordinary wealth available to us by global standards. If you have those things, then you have the kind of responsibility that a person does not have if he or she is slaving seventy hours a week to put food on the table; a responsibility at the very least to inform yourself about power. Beyond that, it is a question of whether you believe in moral certainties or not. ~ Noam Chomsky

Yet I also felt, for the first time, truly and sincerely pissed. It was enough already. Enough! I'd reached that point that comes in the life of most anxiety sufferers when, fed up by the constant waking torture, dejected and buckled but not yet crushed, they at last turn to their anxiety, to themselves, and say, "Listen here: Fuck you. Fuck you! I am sick and fucking tired of this bullshit. I refuse to let you win. I am not going to take it anymore. You are ruining my fucking life and you MUST FUCKING DIE!" Unfortunately, this approach rarely solves the problem. Anxiety doesn't bend to absolutism. You have to take a subtler, more reasoned approach. But that doesn't mean anger is totally unhelpful. Being pissed off is a strong cocktail for the will. It stiffens the spine. It strengthens resolve. It makes a person less willing to run away from the anxiety and more willing to walk into it, which you're going to have to do, ultimately, if you don't want to end up a complete agoraphobic. Anger breeds defiance, and defiance is inspiriting. It's good to refuse to give in to anxiety. You just have to know how much you can take. ~ Daniel B. Smith

I am a firm believer that there is rarely a straight line between good and evil. ~ Nicholas Denmon

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

Absolutism is a guarantee of objectionable morals in the same way that absolutism in government is a guarantee of objectionable government. ~ Robert Briffault

The theorizing mind tends always to the over-simplification of its materials. This is the root of all that absolutism and one-sided dogmatism by which both philosophy and religion have been infested. ~ William James

Does it seem to you impossible to imagine anything more inextricable than the social contract, when you think of the frightful number of relations that it must regulate
something like squaring the circle, or finding perpetual motion? That is the reason why, wearied of the struggle, you fall back on absolutism and force. ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

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

When one turns from reason to faith, when one rejects the absolutism of reality, one undercuts the absolutism of one's consciousness - and one's mind becomes an organ one cannot trust any longer. It becomes what the mystics claim it to be: a tool of distortion. ~ Ayn Rand

Ivan showed that in his time and place the only antidote to chaos was absolutism. ~ Robert D. Kaplan

The idea of God is the type and foundation of the principle of authority and absolutism, which it is our task to destroy or at least to subordinate wherever it manifests itself. ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

We humans, through old habits, and because of the inherent structure of human knowledge have a tendency to make static, definite, and, in a way, absolutistic one-valued statements. But when we fight absolutism, we quite often establish, instead, some other dogma equally silly and harmful. For instance, an active atheist is psycho-logically as unsound as a rabid theist. ~ Alfred Korzybski

Hard edges make truth and by necessity, truth is unbending. Unlike truth's absolutism, justice is a qualitative substance; it is not an absolute tenet. Justice must be pliable in order to meet the needs of more than one person or one group. Justice goes against separation; it is a form of human superglue. Justice is what binds us as people. No human is capable of measuring out or dispensing unqualified justice. Justice naturally seeks conciliation and demands compromise. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

In general, however, these gentlemen, the reformers, legislators, and politicians, do not desire to exercise an immediate despotism over mankind. No, they are too moderate and too philanthropic for that. They only contend for the despotism, the absolutism, the omnipotence of the law. ~ Frederic Bastiat

All that Socrates could effect by way of protest against the tyranny of the reformed democracy was to die for his convictions. The Stoics could only advise the wise man to hold aloof from politics, keeping the unwritten law in his heart. But when Christ said: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's," those words, spoken on His last visit to the Temple, three days before His death, gave to the civil power, under the protection of conscience, a sacredness it had never enjoyed, and bounds it had never acknowledged; and they were the repudiation of absolutism and the inauguration of freedom. For our Lord not only delivered the precept, but created the force to execute it. To maintain the necessary immunity in one supreme sphere, to reduce all political authority within defined limits, ceased to be an aspiration of patient reasoners, and was made the perpetual charge and care of the most energetic institution and the most universal association in the world. The new law, the new spirit, the new authority, gave to liberty a meaning and a value it had not possessed in the philosophy or in the constitution of Greece or Rome before the knowledge of the truth that makes us free. ~ John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

Historians of the sentimental school have sometimes regretted that royalty became absolute, while at the same time rejoicing that it installed plebeians in office. They deceive themselves. Royalty exalted plebeians just because it aimed at becoming absolute; it became absolute because it had exalted plebeians. ~ Bertrand De Jouvenel

If you don't have the faith in principles and you don't believe in the absolutism of the truth then you won't be able achieve anything in life. ~ Sunday Adelaja

In an absolutism, the autocrat is visible and tangible. The real despotism of republican institutions is far deeper, more insidious, because it rests on the popular delusion of self-government and independence. That is the subtle source of democratic tyranny, and, as such, it cannot be reached with a bullet. ~ Alexander Berkman

Those who claim absolutism is merely a myth are right that it has been misused simply as a byword for political centralisation. ~ Peter Wilson

Until the end of the nineteenth century these undergraduates never numbered more than a few thousand. Entirely on their own, however, and in
defiance of the most integrated absolutism of the time, they aspired to liberate and provisionally did
contribute to the liberation of forty million muzhiks. Almost all of them paid for this liberation by suicide,
execution, prison, or madness. The entire history of Russian terrorism can be summed up in the struggle
of a handful of intellectuals to
abolish tyranny, against a background of a silent populace. Their debilitated victory was finally betrayed.
But by their sacrifice and even by their most extreme negations they gave substance to a new standard of
values, a new virtue, which even today has not ceased to oppose tyranny and to give aid to the cause of
true liberation. ~ Albert Camus

The modern absolutism, which we find the most natural thing in the world, would have been quite beyond the dreams of the most absolute of kings. ~ Bertrand De Jouvenel

Relativity must replace absolutism in the realm of morals as well as in the spheres of physics and biology. ~ Thomas Cochrane

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

The absolutist takes himself to read nature in her very own language, but the relativist insists that nature does not speak, and we hear only what we have elected to hear. ~ Simon Blackburn

It is possible that the distinction between moral relativism and moral absolutism has sometimes been blurred because an excessively consistent practice of either leads to the same practical result - ruthlessness in political life. ~ Richard Hofstadter

We Hindus do not merely tolerate, we unite ourselves with every religion, praying in the mosque of the Mohammedan, worshipping before the fire of the Zoroastrian, and kneeling to the Cross of the Christian. We know that all religions alike, from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, are but so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realize the Infinite. So we gather all these flowers and, binding them together with the cords of love, make them into a wonderful bouquet of worship. ~ Seraphim Rose

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

All parties without exception, when they seek for power, are varieties of absolutism. ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

The Bible is clear: Truth exists. It can be known. And when we ground our beliefs in it, we are rational. ~ Patty Houser

Most people believe you have to have some moral absolutes if you want to hold back chaos. ~ Peter Kreeft

One king, one law, one faith. ~ Louis XVI Of France

In a bravura demonstration of stonewalling, righteousness, and hurt sincerity, Steve Jobs successfully took to the stage the other day to deny the problem, dismiss the criticism, and spread the blame among other smartphone makers," Michael Wolff of newser.com wrote. "This is a level of modern marketing, corporate spin, and crisis management about which you can only ask with stupefied incredulity and awe: How do they get away with it? Or, more accurately, how does he get away with it?" Wolff attributed it to Jobs's mesmerizing effect as "the last charismatic individual." Other CEOs would be offering abject apologies and swallowing massive recalls, but Jobs didn't have to. "The grim, skeletal appearance, the absolutism, the ecclesiastical bearing, the sense of his relationship with the sacred, really works, and, in this instance, allows him the privilege of magisterially deciding what is meaningful and what is trivial. ~ Walter Isaacson

At some point free expression absolutism becomes childish and unserious. ~ Garry Trudeau

The saving principles and doctrines of the Church are established, fixed, and unchangeable. ~ James E. Faust

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

In his conception of science's method and role, then, Descartes openly followed the style of the Renascence despot; he preferred absolute government, with its Procrustean simplifications, to democratic government, with its divided powers, its tenacious traditions, its embarrassing historic contradictions, its confusion and compromises and obscurities. But the acceptance of the latter is in fact the necessary price for a method capable of embracing the complexities of life without leaving any function or purpose unrecognized, uncounted, or uncared for. By his penchant for political absolutism Descartes paved the way for the eventual militarization of both science and technics. ~ Lewis Mumford

According to the moral absolutism that characterizes McCandless's beliefs, a challenge in which a successful outcome is assured isn't a challenge at all. ~ Jon Krakauer

George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. ~ Christopher Hitchens