Quotes About Absolutism

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

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.

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.

There is nothing quite like the moral absolutism of the young." -Hodge

The Pythagoreans had no sex prejudice, contrary to later times, but Parmenides goes much further than they did, further than ever Mr. Robert Graves would dare. His matriarchal absolutism is revealed not only in his Daemon Lady but in all her attendants and epicleses,...

According to the same law of nature in virtue of which the smallest organism infinitely surpasses the most artistic machine, every constitution however defective which gives play to the free self-determination of a majority of citizens infinitely surpasses the most brilliant and humane absolutism; for the former is capable of development and therefore living, the latter is what it is and therefore dead.

L'idéologie guette l'esprit qui, se réjouissant de lui-même comme le Zarathoustra de Nietzsche, devient irrésistiblement presque un absolu de lui-même. La théorie empêche cela. Elle corrige la naïverté de sa confiance en soi sans qu'il doive pourtant sacrifier la spontanéité à laquelle la théorie pour sa part veut accéder.

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.

In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state's role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.

The trouble when people stop believing in God is not that they thereafter believe in nothing; it is that they thereafter believe in anything. In this century, 'anything' has included Hitler, Stalin and Mao, authors of the great genocidal madnesses of our time.

Each provision of the Constitution is important, and I cannot subscribe to a doctrine of unlimited absolutism for the First Amendment at the cost of downgrading other provisions.

Unlike Washington, the California legislature has proved that cooperation is both possible and essential to successful policymaking, while stubborn absolutism will have you trailing head lice in popularity polls.

Students should go to college with an open mind. I advise them to ignore all the absolutism around them, both in terms of ideas and people. When they're told that some people or ideas are wrong, hateful, or offensive, a light bulb should go off in their heads. That is the moment their curiosity should be piqued to find out for themselves whether it is indeed a "bad" thing. Adopting an attitude of critical thinking is most crucial in learning anything.

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.

Religion and ethics were not always—or even frequently—mutually compatible. The demands of religious absolutism or fundamentalism or rampaging relativism often reflected 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. Sol's

Religion and ethics were not always—or even frequently—mutually compatible. The demands of religious absolutism or fundamentalism or rampaging relativism often reflected 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.

Damn the Absolute!

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.

Five long centuries of absolutism -from Ivan the Terrible to the Soviet seventies- had left the Russian massed submissive. In their personal lives, I found them ingenious in beating the numbing inefficiency of the state economy. Their black market was so vast that it operated as a countereconomy, even to the extent of producing underground millionaires. But in the sphere of political action, grass-roots initative was moribund.

"Talking of axes," said the Duchess, "chop off her head!"

It is impossible to understand many of the poorest regions of the world at the end of the twentieth century without understanding the new absolutism of the twentieth century: communism.

While in England the profits of the slave trade helped to enrich those who opposed absolutism, in Africa they helped to create and strengthen absolutism. Farther

The leaders of the French Revolution and, subsequently, Napoleon exported the revolution to these lands, destroying absolutism, ending feudal land relations, abolishing guilds, and imposing equality before the law—the all-important notion of rule of law, which we will discuss in greater detail in the next chapter. The French Revolution thus prepared not only France but much of the rest of Europe for inclusive institutions and the economic growth that these would spur. As

But in many other cases, just the opposite takes place, and the process of political centralization also ushers in an era of greater absolutism.