Absolute Knowledge Quotes & Sayings

According to Hegel
to use the Marxist terminology
Religion is only an ideological superstructure that is born and exists solely in relation to a real substructure. This substructure, which supports both religion and philosophy, is nothing but the totality of human actions realized during the course of universal history, that history in and by which man has created a series of specifically human worlds, essentially different from the natural world. It is these social worlds that are reflected in the religious and philosophical ideologies, and therefore
to come to the point at once
absolute knowledge, which reveals the totality of Being, can be realized only at the end of history, in the last world created by man. — Alexandre Kojeve

Philosophy has been described as thinking about thinking, and all Christians should do that. The term comes from two Greek words, philia ("love") and sophia ("wisdom"), thus "loving wisdom." Nothing anti-Christian appears in that definition. Problems arise if we seek wisdom apart from God, or elevate human reason above Him, but according to Proverbs 4:5-7, God's people should love and seek wisdom.
Formal philosophy is divided into three major areas-incidentally, all core Christian issues: (1) Metaphysics,
which asks questions about the nature of reality: "What is real?" "Is the basic essence of the world matter, or spirit, or something else?" (2) Epistemology, which addresses issues concerning truth and knowledge: "What do we know?" "How do we know it?" "Why do we think it's true?" (3) Ethics, which considers moral problems: "What is right and wrong?" "Are moral values absolute or relative?" "What is the good life, and how do we achieve it? — Rick Cornish

For of what use is existence to the creature if it cannot know its Maker? How could men be reasonable beings if they had no knowledge of the Word and Reason of the Father, through Whom they had received their being? They would be no better than the beasts, had they no knowledge save of earthly things; and why should God have made them at all, if He had not intended them to know Him? But, in fact, the good God has given them a share in His own Image, that is, in our Lord Jesus Christ, and has made even themselves after the same Image and Likeness. Why? Simply in order that through this gift of Godlikeness in themselves they may be able to perceive the Image Absolute, that is the Word Himself, and through Him to apprehend the Father; which knowledge of their Maker is for men the only really happy and blessed life. — Athanasius Of Alexandria

The Principle of Uncertainty fixed once for all the realisation that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. When the future looks back on the 1930s it will think of them as a crucial confrontation of culture as I have been expounding it, the ascent of man, against the throwback to the despots' belief that they have absolute certainty. — Jacob Bronowski

Humans may crave absolute certainty; they may aspire to it; they may pretend, as partisans of certain religions do, to have attained it. But the history of science - by far the most successful claim to knowledge accessible to humans - teaches that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with the proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us. — Carl Sagan

If it is true that we cannot possess knowledge of what is good in any absolute sense, it is equally true that we have an ethical duty to decide between what is better and what is worse. — Richard Kearney

Power, according to Hobbes, is the accumulated control that permits the individual to fix prices and regulate supply and demand in such a way that they contribute to his own advantage. The individual will consider his advantage in complete isolation, from the point of view of an absolute minority, so to speak; he will then realize that he can pursue and achieve his interest only with the help of some kind of majority. Therefore, if man is actually driven by nothing but his individual interests, desire for power must be the fundamental passion of man. It regulates the relations between individual and society, and all other ambitions as well, for riches, knowledge, and honor follow from it. — Hannah Arendt

This is the God Nietzsche said had to be killed because nobody can tolerate being made into a mere object of absolute knowledge and absolute control. This is the deepest root of atheism. It is an atheism which is justified as the reaction against theological theism and its disturbing implications.8 — James Carroll

Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after the holocaust is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today. Absolute reification, which presupposed intellectual progress as one of its elements, is now preparing to absorb the mind entirely. Critical intelligence cannot be equal to this challenge as long as it confines itself to self-satisfied contemplation. — Theodor Adorno

Even those who have desired to work out a completely positive philosophy have been philosophers only to the extent that, at the same time, they have refused the right to install themselves in absolute knowledge. They taught not this knowledge, but its becoming in us, not the absolute but, at most, our absolute relation to it, as Kierkegaard said. What makes a philosopher is the movement which leads back without ceasing from knowledge to ignorance, from ignorance to knowledge, and a kind of rest in this movement. — Maurice Merleau Ponty

The only safe guide is the Bible. It is the revelation of a God who has infinite knowledge and can therefore give you absolute truth. God has given you a revelation that is robust and complete. It presents an accurate and comprehensive picture of children, parents, family life, values, training, nurture, and discipline - all you need to be equipped for the task of parenting. — Tedd Tripp

Knowledge is power. Knowledge is what makes information valuable. For knowledge to be useful, it must be acted upon. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. (John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, 1834 - 1902). All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. (Edmund Burke, 1729-1797) A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. (George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950). We must never take our freedom for granted. — Al Zelczer

We shall unleash the nihilists and the atheists and we shall provoke a great social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to all nations the effect of absolute atheism; the origins of savagery and of most bloody turmoil.
Then everywhere, the people will be forced to defend themselves against the world minority of the world revolutionaries and will exterminate those destroyers of civilization and the multitudes disillusioned with Christianity whose spirits will be from that moment without direction and leadership and anxious for an ideal, but without knowledge where to send its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer brought finally out into public view. A manifestation which will result from a general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and Atheism; both conquered and exterminated at the same time. — Albert Pike

We need not know a thing in order to be able to investigate and control it. Where knowledge is absent - and in an absolute sense we can know nothing - a vague working hypothesis is quite enough for all practical and even philosophical purposes. — Aldous Huxley

You don't need absolute knowledge to have reliable knowledge — D. J. Grothe

Loneliness is the fundamental force that urgees mystics to a deeper union with God ... An experience of God quenches this thirst for the absolute but at the same time, paradoxiacally, whets it, because this is an experience that can never be total; by necessity, the knowledge of God is always partial. So loneliness opens up mystics to a desire to love each other and every human being as God loves them. — Jean Vanier

If you could read some of the stories that we had before us of parents of children dying of, let's say, bone cancer. Or people who dealt with family members drowning in their own bodies, in the end, suffering without any hope of modern medical science easing their pain or offering any comfort. With the absolute knowledge that they were going to die anyway. I can't quite comprehend how we could want those people to continue to suffer that extreme agony on the understanding that it is the will of a creator or some other philosophical concept. — Kelvin Ogilvie

Woe to the suicides! I believe that there can be none more miserable than they. Oh, there are some who remain proud and fierce even in hell, in spite of their certain knowledge and contemplation of the absolute truth; there are some fearful ones who have given themselves over to Satan and his proud spirit entirely. For such, hell is voluntary and ever consuming; they are tortured by their own choice. For they have cursed themselves, cursing God and life. And they will burn in the fire of their own wrath forever and yearn for death and annihilation. But they will not attain to death. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Every reflection today, whether nihilist or positivist, gives birth, sometimes without knowing it, to
standards that science itself confirms. The quantum theory, relativity, the uncertainty of interrelationships,
define a world that has no definable reality except on the scale of average
greatness, which is our own. The ideologies which guide our world were born in the time of absolute
scientific discoveries. Our real knowledge, on the other hand, only justifies a system of thought based on
relative discoveries. "Intelligence," says Lazare Bickel, "is our faculty for not developing what we think
to the very end, so that we can still believe in reality." Approximative thought is the only creator of
reality. — Albert Camus

The damned had been given that insight which makes hardship so easy to bear - the absolute and certain knowledge that things could be worse. — Terry Pratchett

Knowledge is not enough. It never is. It's the capacity to do something with that knowledge. To do it perfectly. Absolute timing. With devastating consequences. — Steven Erikson

The truth, I am convinced, is that there is no longer a poetical audience among the higher class of minds, that moral, political, and physical science have entirely withdrawn from poetry the attention of all whose attention is worth having; and that the poetical reading public being composed of the mere dregs of the intellectual community, the most sufficing passport to their favour must rest on the mixture of a little easily-intelligible portion of mawkish sentiment with an absolute negation of reason and knowledge. — Thomas Love Peacock

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Thomas H. Huxley — Thomas Henry Huxley

The arrogant elimination of the Djaouts of our world must nerve us to pursue our own combative doctrine, namely: that peaceful cohabitation on this planet demands that while the upholders of any creed are free to adopt their own existential absolutes, the right of others to do the same is thereby rendered implicit and sacrosanct. Thus the creed of inquiry, of knowledge and exchange of ideas, must be upheld as an absolute, as ancient and eternal as any other. — Wole Soyinka

We know that there is no absolute knowledge, that there are only theories; but we forget this. The better educated we are, the harder we believe in axioms. — Lincoln Steffens

It isn't the absolute truth about life and death, but the thing that helps us to live and confront the challenges of day-to-day life. It isn't what we learn from books, which serves only to fuel futile arguments about what happened or will happen; it is the knowledge that lives in the hearts of men and women of good will — Paulo Coelho

When a man's trust is violated, he will leave even his friend. Hey, you shouldn't leave him! There is the energy of the absolute Self within and if the knowledge of the Self is attained, one may even attain the state of the absolute-Self! — Dada Bhagwan

In the final, the positive, state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws-that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts. — Auguste Comte

There was the goal of all those con men of library and classroom, who sold their revelations as reason, their "instincts" as science, their cravings as knowledge, the goal of all the savages of the non-objective, the non-absolute, the relative, the tentative, the probable - the savages who, seeing a farmer gather a harvest, can consider it only as a mystic phenomenon unbound by the law of causality and created by the farmers' omnipotent whim, who then proceed to seize the farmer, to chain him, to deprive him of tools, of seeds, of water, of soil, to push him out on a barren rock and to command: "Now grow a harvest and feed us! — Ayn Rand

At birth one is Shudra, through education and samskaras, one becomes cultured (Dwija or twice born), then by practicing the Vedas, one becomes Vipra or knowledgeable and it is only by acquiring the knowledge of the Absolute Brahm, does one become enlightened or Brahmin. — Kamlesh Kapur

It's true that God wants us to grow in our knowledge and obedience of him, but he never wants us to stop living with the humility, trust, and the absolute abandonment of a child. — Caleb Breakey

The hypothesis of God, for instance, gives an incomparably absolute opportunity to understand everything and know absolutely nothing. Give man an extremely simplified system of the world and explain every phenomenon away on the basis of that system. An approach like that doesn't require any knowledge. Just a few memorized formulas plus so-called intuition and so-called common sense. — Arkady Strugatsky

Kindness is not an option, it is an absolute necessity of life. — Debasish Mridha

Anytime that knowledge and a version of the truth are considered to be absolute, fundamentalism is the result, whether the arena is Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or any other religious faith, as well as atheism, conservative or liberal political views, even evolution or intelligent design. Anytime our minds are closed and there is no room for dissent, we are on a slippery slope towards stagnation. — Carlton D. Pearson

Absolute knowledge is only possible when you know the Absolute Truth and to have the Absolute Truth you have to go to the Absolute Being within you which is your Spirit. So, it gives you the truth, it gives you the collective consciousness. The main thing is that you become extremely peaceful personality, you become peace, you emit peace. — Nirmala Srivastava

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

Certain knowledge of what to fight for, and what to fight against, gives meaning to life and provides its own version of discipline: never give up. That kind of meaning is illusory, I now believe, and blinkered. Fealty to a mystical absolute is a formula for disaster, especially in transformative times. — Stewart Brand

This (Knowledge of Akram Vignan) is the 'real' thing and it is the absolute truth and the absolute truth is always functional (gives results). — Dada Bhagwan

In laying hands upon the sacred ark of absolute permanency, in treating the forms that had been regarded as types of fixity and perfection as originating and passing away, the Origin of Species introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound to transform the logic of knowledge, and hence the treatment of morals, politics, and religion. — John Dewey

People kill and a re killed because they cling too tightly to their own beliefs and ideologies. [ ... ] The second precept of the Order of Interbeing, founded within the Zen Buddhist tradition during the was in Vietnam, is about letting go of views: Do not think the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice nonattachment from views in order to be open to receive others' viewpoints. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I am neither man nor angel. I have no sex nor limit. I am knowledge itself. I am He. I have neither anger nor hatred. I have neither pain nor pleasure. Death or birth I never had. For I am Knowledge Absolute, and Bliss Absolute. I am He, my soul, I am He! — Swami Vivekananda

We could all be mediums, and all have absolute knowledge, if the bright light of our ego consciousness would not dim it. — Marie-Louise Von Franz

Things exist because we observe them; because something beyond our control created them. Absolute Knowledge is infinity. It's an impossible concept to comprehend, let alone achieve without an infinite amount of time. — Drew Cordell

Extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them. This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance ... This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses. — Blaise Pascal

Once a person starts seeing his own mistakes, he starts to become Parmatma, (absolute supreme Self)! — Dada Bhagwan

The possession of a perfect knowledge of your business is an absolute necessity in order to insure success. — P.T. Barnum

The significance of that 'absolute commandment', know thyself - whether we look at it in itself or under the historical circumstances of its first utterance - is not to promote mere self-knowledge in respect of the particular capacities, character, propensities, and foibles of the single self. The knowledge it commands means that of man's genuine reality - of what is essentially and ultimately true and real - of spirit as the true and essential bein — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Knowlede is power and Absolute Knowledge is Absolute Power or the Power of Truth, which is constantly shaping events and circumstances to reveal the errors in our beliefs. — Matthew A. Petti

Old golfers don't win (it's not an absolute, it's a general rule). Why? The older golfer can hit the ball as far as the young one. He chips and putts equally well. And will probably have a better knowledge of the course. So why does he take the extra stroke that denies him victory? Experience. He knows the downside, what happens if it goes wrong, which makes him more cautious. The young player is either ignorant or reckless to caution. That is his edge. It is the same with all of us. Knowledge makes us play safe. The secret is to stay childish. — Paul Arden

After over six hundred hours of listening, John knew two more things: That the most profound truth lay in the labyrinths that coiled behind a green door in the interviewee's mind the very second that Alfred Kinsey said, "Tell me about your fantasies"; and, two, that with the proper information and the correct stimuli he could get carefully chosen people to break through those doors and act out their fantasies, past moral strictures and the boundaries of conscience, taking him past his already absolute knowledge of mankind's unutterable stupidity into a new night realm that he as yet was incapable of imagining. Because the night was there to be plundered; and only someone above its laws could exact its bounty and survive. — James Ellroy

Life is called Samsara - it is the result of the conflicting forces acting upon us. Materialism says, "The voice of freedom is a delusion." Idealism says, "The voice that tells of bondage is but a dream." Vedanta says, "We are free and not free at the same time." That means that we are never free on the earthly plane, but ever free on the spiritual side. The Self is beyond both freedom and bondage. We are Brahman, we are immortal knowledge beyond the senses, we are Bliss Absolute. — Swami Vivekananda

The absolute dependence of a newborn infant inspired many things in me, but it did not activate any magical knowledge about what to do for the next twenty years. — Mary Kay Blakely

Soul (Atma), Absolute Knowledge (Gnan) and the Absolute Supreme Soul (Parmatma) are one and the same element. — Dada Bhagwan

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

Blessed are the poor in spirit ... " This is the first principle in the kingdom of God. The underlying foundation of Jesus Christ's kingdom is poverty, not possessions; not making decisions for Jesus, but having such a sense of absolute futility that we finally admit, "Lord, I cannot even begin to do it." Then Jesus says, "Blessed are you ... " (5:11). This is the doorway to the kingdom, and yet it takes us so long to believe that we are actually poor! The knowledge of our own poverty is what brings us to the proper place where Jesus Christ accomplishes His work. — Oswald Chambers

Yet while nature is in constant flux, we always go against the grain and try to freeze our ideas and experiences and make them absolute. It is egotism that makes us identify with one opinion rather than another, become quarrelsome and unkind, say *this* could not mean *that*, and think we have a duty to change others to suit ourselves. — Karen Armstrong

Even the slightest criticism of others is an impediment (hindrance) to Absolute Knowledge (Kevalgnan, Absolute Enlightenment). It also hinders Atmagnan (Knowledge of the Self), also hinders Samkit (Self-realization). — Dada Bhagwan

In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing ... The teacher presents himself to his students as their necessary opposite; by considering their ignorance absolute, he justifies his own existence. — Paulo Freire

All practice or worship is only for taking off this veil. When that will go, you will find that the Sun of Absolute Knowledge is shining in Its own lustre. — Swami Vivekananda

It is not a matter of approaching a fixed limit: absolute Knowledge or the happiness of man or the perfection of beauty; all human effort would then be doomed to failure, for with each step forward the horizon recedes a step; for man it is a matter of pursuing the expansion of his existence and of retrieving this very effort as an absolute. Science — Simone De Beauvoir

It is a truism that the structure of a society is basically determined by its technology. Not in an absolute sense-there may be totally different cultures using identical tools-but the tools settle the possibilities; you can't have interstellar trade without spaceships. A race limited to a single planet, possessing a high knowledge of mechanics but with its basic machines of industry and war requiring a large capital investment, will inevitably tend toward collectivism under one name or another. Free enterprise needs elbow room. — Poul Anderson

Imagination is a potential reality;
act on it to make it an absolute reality. — Debasish Mridha

By every measure, John Kennedy's sex life was compulsive and reckless. At one level, it had clear public consequences. Knowledge of Kennedy's behavior gave FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover absolute job security, as well as the potential power to derail Kennedy's re-election had he survived assassination. — Jeff Greenfield

The knowledge that mankind needs is not the way or principle which has an absolute existence, but the particular truths for here and now and for particular individuals. Absolute truth is imaginary, abstract, vague, without evidence, and cannot be demonstrated. — Hu Shih

Germans are self-confident on the basis of an abstract notion - science, that is, the supposed knowledge of absolute truth. A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. — Leo Tolstoy

He who can see his own mistake can become absolute supreme Self (Parmatma)! — Dada Bhagwan

Happiness is a perceptual reality, not an absolute certainty. — Debasish Mridha

If all that one sees is a tiny speck of perspective in the larger scheme of things. And each perspective is made alive by the amalgamation of learning. And learning is a mere accumulation of skill and knowledge : both deriving from Truth. And Truth is not absolute but more of a figment of one's imagination made apparent to the senses. Then all, or for the most part, is fiction. — Nikhil Sharda

It is hardly surprising that children should enthusiastically start their education at an early age with the Absolute Knowledge of computer science; while they are unable to read, for reading demands making judgments at every line. Conversation is almost dead, and soon so too will be those who knew how to speak. — Guy Debord

There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy. — Jacob Bronowski

This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. — Jacob Bronowski

The respect one gets in the forces by virtue of the 'rank' is not absolute. 'True respect' is the one that is earned by virtue of actions, experience, knowledge and demeanor. — Rajat Mishra

Nay even in the life, of the same individual there is succession and not absolute unity: a man is called the same, and yet in the short interval which elapses between youth and age, and in which every animal is said to have life and identity, he is undergoing a perpetual process of loss and reparation - hair, flesh, bones, blood, and the whole body are always changing. Which is true not only of the body, but also of the soul, whose habits, tempers, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains, fears, never remain the same in any one of us, but are always coming and going; and equally true of knowledge, and what is still more surprising to us mortals, not only do the sciences in general spring up and decay, so that in respect of them we are never the same; but each of them individually experiences a like change. — Diotima

There are only a few bits of absolute knowledge in the world, people can learn only one or two fundamental facts about each other, the rest is decoration and prejudice. — Katherine Anne Porter

Knowledge is more a matter of learning than of the exercise of absolute judgment. Learning requires time, and in time the situation dealt with, as well as the learner, undergoes change. — Frank Knight

Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty
some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain. — Richard P. Feynman

The natural order of life is not the thinking and imagination, but living in the moment, with absolute trust. — Roshan Sharma

To become aware of what is constant in the flux of nature and life is the first step in abstract thinking. The recognition of regularity in the courses of the heavenly bodies and in the succession of seasons first provides a basis for a systematic ordering of events, and this knowledge makes possible a calendar ... Simultaneously with this concept, a system of relationships comes into the idea of the world. Change is not something absolute, chaotic, and kaleidoscopic; its manifestation is a relative one, something connected with fixed points and a given order. — Hellmut Wilhelm

Knowledge based on the senses is therefore a subjective judgment, an ever-varying opinion without any absolute foundation. True knowledge, by contrast, is possible only from a direct apprehension of the transcendent Forms, which are eternal and beyond the shifting confusion and imperfection of the physical plane. Knowledge derived from the senses is merely opinion and is fallible by any nonrelative standard. Only knowledge derived directly from the Ideas is infallible and can be justifiably called real knowledge. — Richard Tarnas

The divine Ground of all existence is a spiritual Absolute, ineffable in terms of discursive thought, but (in certain circumstances) susceptible of being directly experienced and realized by the human being. This Absolute is the God-without-form of Hindu and Christian mystical phraseology. The last end of man, the ultimate reason for human existence, is unitive knowledge of the divine Ground - the knowledge that can come only to those who are prepared to "Die to self" and so make room, as it were, for God. — Aldous Huxley

The history of human knowledge has so uninterruptedly shown that to collateral, or incidental, or accidental events we are indebted for the most numerous and most valuable discoveries, that it has at length become necessary, in any prospective view of improvement, to make not only large, but the largest allowances for inventions that shall arise by chance, and quite out of the range of ordinary expectation. It is no longer philosophical to base, upon what has been, a vision of what is to be. Accident is admitted as a portion of the substructure. We make chance a matter of absolute calculation. We subject the unlooked for and unimagined, to the mathematical formulae of the schools. — Edgar Allan Poe

Knowledge of the Absolute depends upon no book, nor upon anything; it is absolute in itself. No amount of study will give this knowledge; is not theory, it is realization. Cleanse the dust from the mirror, purify your own mind, and in a flash you know that you are Brahman. — Swami Vivekananda

I have spent a lifetime looking for remedies to all manner of life's problems
personal, social, political, global. I am deeply suspicious of those who offer simple solutions and statements of absolute certainty or who claim full possession of the truth. Yet I have grown equally skeptical of those who suggest that all is too nuanced and complex for us to learn any lessons, that there are so many sides to every thing that we can pursue knowledge every day of our lives and still know nothing for sure. I believe we can recognize truth when we see it, just not a first and not without ever relenting in our efforts to learn more. This is because the goal we seek, and the good we hope for, comes not as some final reward but as the hidden companion to our quest. It is not what we find, but the reason we cannot stop looking and striving, that tells us why we are here. — Madeleine K. Albright

Can you predict the future with absolute certainty? Your answer must be no. You have two options: You can either decide to accept yourself as an imperfect human being with limited knowledge and realize that you will at times make mistakes, or you can hate yourself for it. — David D. Burns

The slave's self-consciousness, according to Hegel, not the master's, sublates into Absolute Knowledge.
This was changing everything for me. Sublation meant cancelling out and preservation; both, together, at the same time. You could get rid of something and protect it too. I realized that I wanted to sublate myself to Elijah. I wanted to be consumed by him and elevated by him and preserved in the process. I didn't know how to do this. This didn't seem inevitable. Did I have to struggle to the death? — Tamara Faith Berger

Absolute trust in the reality of things begins to be shaken as the problem of truth enters upon the scene. The moment man ceases merely to live in and with reality and demands a knowledge of this reality, he moves into a new and fundamentally different relation to it. At first, to be sure, the question of truth seems to apply only to particular parts and not to the whole of reality. Within this whole different strata of validity begin to be marked off, reality seems to separate sharply from appearance. But it lies in the very nature of the problem of truth that once it arises it never comes to rest. The concept of truth conceals an immanent dialectic that drives it inexorably forward, forever extending its limits. — Ernst Cassirer

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance. — Bertrand Russell

A dragon is a confusion at the heart of things, a law unto himself. He embraces good, evil, and indifference; in his own nature he makes them indivisible and absolute. He knows who he is. Surely you see that... Put it this way. Dragons all love life's finer things- music, art, treasure- the works of the spirit; yet in their personal habits they're foul and bestial- they burn down cathedrals, for instance, and eat maidens- and they see in their whimsical activities no faintest contradiction... Dragons never grow, never change... Believe me, nothing in this world is more despicable than a dragon. They're a walking- or flying- condemnation of all we stand for, all we pray for our children, nay, for ourselves. We struggle to improve ourselves, we tortuously balance on the delicate line between our duties to society and our duties within- our duties to God and our own nature. — John Gardner

Artistic creation, after all, is not subject to absolute laws, valid from age to age; since it is related to the more general aim of mastery of the world, it has an infinite number of facets, the vincula that connect man with his vital activity; and even if the path towards knowledge is unending, no step that takes man nearer to a full understanding of the meaning of his existence can be too small to count. — Andrei Tarkovsky

If Hegel had written the whole of his Logic and in the Preface disclosed the fact that it was only a thought-experiment (in which however at many points he had steered clear of many things), he would have been the greatest thinker who ever lived. As it is, he is merely comic. — Soren Kierkegaard

A scientific approach means knowing what one knows and what one doesn't. Absolute or complete knowledge is unscientific. — Karl Jaspers

He who asserts belief with absolute certainty knows nothing of faith and makes himself into a fool. He who is wise, upon realizing they have done this, recants and searches themselves for further enlightenment. — Cristina Marrero

It was as if he were a single whole, grasped by her first glance at him, like some irreducible absolute, like an axiom not to be explained any further, as if she knew everything about him by direct perception, and what awaited her now was only the process of identifying her knowledge. — Ayn Rand

A modern theory of knowledge which takes account of the relational as distinct from the merely relative character of all historical knowledge must start with the assumption that there are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to conceive of absolute truth existing independently of the values and position of the subject and unrelated to the social context. — Karl Mannheim

Monotheism and an absolute God define one another.

The absolute is a mental construct, an abstract mental model.
The absolute, whether it is a purest abstract essence or an extreme abstract measure, only exists in our minds as an abstraction.

Furthermore, the absolute will only lead to the abandon of all measure and blind us to the relative interdependence of all things.
The measure of knowledge of life is the knowledge of the measure of this relative interdependence. — Haroutioun Bochnakian

Love is not only the expression of emotion or the expression of sentiment, it is a real thing. It is the absolute reality, which influences all creation. — Debasish Mridha

There is no such thing as absolute cost of labour; it is all a matter of comparison. Every one gets the most which he can for his exertions; some can get little or nothing, because they have not sufficient strength, knowledge or ingenuity; others get much, because they have, comparatively speaking, a monopoly of certain powers. — William Stanley Jevons

Complete focused applied awareness of the Soul (shuddha upayog) is considered absolute Knowledge (keval gnan). — Dada Bhagwan

Why is it that skeptics are always being accused of arrogance? For the record, we're the guys who DON'T claim to have absolute knowledge about the origin of the universe, the origin of life, what happens when we die, what will happen in the future, etc. — Guy P. Harrison

What dost thou believe is the most precious and beautiful thing in this world? What I believe is this. To me, "knowledge" is simply a "weapon" for living. 'Tis not my "goal" in life. That which is precious, which is beautiful...the absolute for which I would wager my entire life - 'tis called...love! — Jun Mochizuki