Quotes & Sayings About Absolutes

The inflamed sensitivity induced by radicalized democratic theory finally experiences any limit as arbitrary and tyrannical. There are no absolutes; freedom is absolute. Of course the result is that, on the one hand, the argument justifying freedom disappears and, on the other, all beliefs begin to have the attenuated character that was initially supposed to be limited to religious belief. — Allan Bloom

Where absolute superiority is not attainable, you must produce a relative one at the decisive point by making skillful use ofwhat you have. — Carl Von Clausewitz

The life of a writer is absolute hell compared to the life of a businessman. — Roald Dahl

True inner righteousness does not judge according to custom but by the measure of the most perfect law of God Almighty by which the mores of various places and times were adapted to those places and times. — Augustine Of Hippo

There is no conflict in the absolute universe, but there is conflict in the relative world. — Koichi Tohei

Since there are no absolutes, when it's convenient, you change the rules. Do we know any politicians that have done that? — Ted Cruz

Pursuit of the approximate can conclude. Not so pursuit of the absolute. — Mason Cooley

The power to think as you wish to think is the only power over which you have absolute control. — Napoleon Hill

Articulation! There, by Joe, was MY absolute, if I could be said to have one. At any rate, it is the only thing I can think of about which I ever had, with any frequency at all, the feelings one usually has for one's absolutes. To turn experience into speech - that is, to classify, to categorize, to conceptualize, to grammarize, to syntactify it - is always a betrayal of experience, a falsification of it; but only so betrayed can it be dealt with at all, and only in so dealing with it did I ever feel a man, alive and kicking. — John Barth

The Absolute God of the universe, the creator, preserver, and destroyer of the universe, is impersonal principle. — Swami Vivekananda

The values and assumptions of that household I took in without knowing when or how it happened, and I have them to this day: The pleasure in sharing pleasure. The belief that is is only proper to help lame dogs to get over stiles and young men to put one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. An impatient disregard for small sums of money. The belief that it is a sin against Nature to put sugar in one's tea. The preference for being home over being anywhere else. The belief that generous impulses should be acted on, whether you can afford to do this or not. The trust in premonitions and the knowledge of what is in wrapped packages. The willingness to go to any amount of trouble to make yourself comfortable. The tendency to take refuge in absolutes. The belief that you don't have to apologize for tears; that consoling words should never be withheld; that what somebody wants very much they should, if possible, have. — William Maxwell

(He) mourned mankind, and the blindness of men, who thought that the Kosmos had rules and limits that would shelter them from their own freedom. There were no shelters. There were no final purposes. Futility, and freedom, were Absolute — Bruce Sterling

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

I would rather have strong enemies than a world of passive individualists. In a world of passive individualists nothing seems worth anything simply because nobody stands for anything. That world has no convictions, no victories, no unions, no heroism, no absolutes, no heartbeat. That world has rigor mortis. — Criss Jami

Effort is the key in the relative; effortlessness is the key to the Absolute. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

The Word of God is either absolute or obsolete. — Vance Havner

The Absolute and the Infinite can become this universe only by limitation. — Swami Vivekananda

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

Baseball's absolute unpredictability makes amateurs of us all — Roger Angell

Om is the greatest, meaning the Absolute. — Swami Vivekananda

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

Miracles are statistical improbabilities. And fate is an illusion humanity uses to comfort itself in the dark. There are no absolutes in life, save death. — Amie Kaufman

On the philosophical level, both Buddhism and modern science share a deep suspicion of any notion of absolutes, whether conceptualize as a transcendent being, as an eternal, unchanging principle such as soul, or as a fundamental substratum of reality. ... In the Buddhist investigation of reality, at least in principle, empirical evidence should triumph over scriptural authority, no matter how deeply venerated a scripture may be. ~ 14th Dalai Lama in his talk to the Society for Neuroscience in 2005 in Washington. — Dalai Lama XIV

Never say never," he said urgently, rolling back on top of her and using all of his unusually heavy mass to press her deep into the cocoon of her little girl bed. "The gods love to toy with people who use absolutes. — Josephine Angelini

I think all of us are looking for that which does not admit of bullshit ... If you tell me you can bench press 450, hell, we'll load up the bar and put you under it. Either you can do it or you can't do it - you can't bullshit. Ultimately, sports are just about as close to what one would call the truth as it is possible to get in this world. — Harry Crews

A cat has absolute honesty. — Ernest Hemingway,

The Absolute does not change, or re-evolve. — Swami Vivekananda

In Paris explanations come in a predictable sequence, no matter what is being explained. First comes the explanation in terms of the unique, romantic individual, then the explanation in terms of ideological absolutes, and then the explanation in terms of the futility of all explanation. — Adam Gopnik

I think the industry tends to like to think in the narrow sort of mindset of a businessman, and businessman absolutes, and movies really exist in a much grayer region of dreams and stuff like that, and instinct is prized in movies, it's not prized with the businessmen in movies, but movies themselves often reward instinct rather than pie charts. — Brad Bird

What is liberty? There is no such thing as absolute liberty! — Benito Mussolini

If you want absolutes, you have to invent them yourself. — Marty Rubin

Paradox is a pointer telling you to look beyond it. If paradoxes bother you, that betrays your deep desire for absolutes. The relativist treats a paradox merely as interesting, perhaps amusing or even, dreadful thought, educational. — Frank Herbert

All Renaissance drama, especially the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare, is profoundly concerned with shifting power relations within society. The individual was a new force in relation to the state. The threat of rebellion, of the overturning of established order, was forcefully brought home to the Elizabethan public by the revolt of the Earl of Essex, once the Queen's favourite. The contemporary debate questioned the relationship between individual life, the power and authority of the state, and the establishing of moral absolutes. Where mediaeval drama was largely used as a means of showing God's designs, drama in Renaissance England focuses on man, and becomes a way of exploring his weaknesses, depravities, flaws - and qualities. — Ronald Carter

If beauty is relative, then any and everything when compared to the beauty of God is absolutely hideous. — Criss Jami

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

Good and bad aren't absolutes. They are beliefs, judgements, ideas based on limited knowledge as well as on the inclinations of our minds. — Steve Hagen

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

Nobody in this world possesses absolute truth. — Mahatma Gandhi

In itself, every idea is neutral, or should be; but man animates ideas, projects his flames and flaws into them; impure, transformed into beliefs, ideas take their place in time, take shape as events: the trajectory is complete, from logic to epilepsy ... whence the birth of ideologies, doctrines, deadly games.
Idolaters by instinct, we convert the objects of our dreams and our interests into the Unconditional. History is nothing but a procession of false Absolutes, a series of temples raised to pretexts, a degradation of the mind before the Improbable. Even when he turns from religion, man remains subject to it; depleting himself to create fake gods, he feverishly adopts them: his need for fiction, for mythology triumphs over evidence and absurdity alike. — Emil Cioran

[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

Historically speaking, just about everything we know to be 'absolute' will eventually change due to 'new findings'. — Gary Hopkins

Following Korzybski , I put things in probabilities, not absolutes ... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics , to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics , ideology , jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory . — Robert Anton Wilson

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

I trust that absolutes have gradations. — Jane Austen

Marriage and parenting are the two strongest vows anyone will ever make. When you see these commitments being carelessly discarded, you can be certain that the ethics of that generation have been abandoned. ... What our society needs is a good dose of biblical ethic from God's people - the kind of ethic that requires us to keep our word no matter what the costs. Situational ethics have so shaped our society that even God's people have lost the concept of absolutes when it comes to keeping our word. — Larry Burkett

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

If I can't, then that would make it an absolute and you said there aren't any absolutes." "That's different." "How is it different?" "It's the government." "You mean, there aren't any absolutes except the government?" "I mean, if they say it's important, then it is. — Ayn Rand

Doing the right thing at all costs is an absolute, and only a sith deals in absolutes. — Dave Filoni

We have also set up for them an edifying project for a continuous mitigation of their own tyranny, ascribing to them an unshakeable faith in the triumph of virtue, as well as in the moral justification of their crimes. These are the theories of well-meaning children who see everything in black or white, dream of nothing but angels or demons, and have no idea of the incredible number of hypocritical masks of every color and shape and size which men use to conceal their features when they have passed the age of devotion to ideals and have abandoned themselves unrestrainedly to their egotistic desires — Alfred De Vigny

The beginning of religion, more precisely its content, is the concept of religion itself, that God is the absolute truth, the truth of all things, and subjectively that religion alone is the absolutely true knoweldge. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Near beliefs are to blame for a new brand of Christianity that is epidemic in our homes and churches-a faith that has little flavor, little light and little influence. When near beliefs are our only source of motivation, tough stands are never taken, feathers are never ruffled, and absolutes are held very loosely. — Dennis Rainey

It almost always happens that true, but exaggerated, coloring is more agreeable than absolute coloring. — Michel Eugene Chevreul

I used to think that paired opposites were a given, that love was the opposite of hate, right the opposite of wrong. But now I think we sometimes buy into these concepts because it is so much easier to embrace absolutes than to suffer reality. I don't think anything is the opposite of love. Reality is unforgivingly complex. — Anne Lamott

Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half measures, compromises, lesser evils, and gropings toward the perfect. The rejection of approximations and the insistence on absolutes are the manifestation of a nihilism that loathes freedom, tolerance, and equity. — Eric Hoffer

It's all about perseverance. Absolute perseverance. You can always get back up. — Cory Monteith

Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things. — Novalis

There is no such thing as an absolute truth to be discovered. — T. E. Hulme

Without absolutes revealed from without by God Himself, we are left rudderless in a sea of conflicting ideas about manners, justice and right and wrong, issuing from a multitude of self-opinionated thinkers. — John Owen

To apologize for your personal absolutes, for what Sandy Pinter calls your "Core Attachments," means apologizing for your very existence. — Walter Kirn

Rule makers always draw up their precious rules and regulations in safety and comfort, not out in the field, where those same absolutes are supposed to be applied. At those times we have to rely on our own minds and feelings. — Alan Dean Foster

When you find your definitions in God, you find the very purpose for which you were created. Put your hand into God's hand, know His absolutes, demonstrate His love, present His truth, and the message of redemption and transformation will take hold. — Ravi Zacharias

Hunter turned and kissed Dillon deeply before he rinsed off. He had never wished for his sight before, but he would have given anything at that moment to be able to turn and witness the beauty of the man that had just made love to him. He'd literally felt the change in Dillon's grip as he made love.
The very first time they were together, Dillon's hold was uncertain, a tentative embrace that held no absolutes, no dreams, but just now it was different; it was a grip that sat right on the edge of possession, a possession Hunter would willingly give, if asked.
But would Dillon ask, and would he be able to accept? — Brandon Shire

You and I and everything in the universe are that Absolute, not parts, but the whole. You are the whole of that Absolute, and so are all others, because the idea of part cannot come into it. — Swami Vivekananda

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

A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity. — Eleanor Roosevelt

All phenomena are correlated in one absolute and necessary law, from which they can all be deduced. — Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

Kate Atkinson is an absolute must-read. I love everything she writes. — Harlan Coben

Hatred of the creator can turn to hatred of creation or to exclusive and defiant
love of what exists. But in both cases it ends in murder and loses the right to be called rebellion. One can
be nihilist in two ways, in both by having an intemperate recourse to absolutes. Apparently there are rebels who
want to die and those who want to cause death. But they are identical, consumed with desire for the true life,
frustrated by their desire for existence and therefore preferring generalized injustice to mutilated justice. At this
pitch of indignation, reason becomes madness. If it is true that the instinctive rebellion of the human heart advances
gradually through the centuries toward its most complete realization, it has also grown, as we have seen, in blind
audacity, to the inordinate extent of deciding to answer universal murder by metaphysical assassination. — Albert Camus

There is a popular notion about prayer that assumes that the thing asked for ought to be the object of faith - "Lord, give me this or that," wherefore "this" and "that" become the realities. No. The Bible states the absolutes that we can be certain of: the character of God, His love, His will that we be conformed to His Son's likeness, His sovereign control of all the universe. When faith latches on to those realities that we do not see with our eyes, it can never be confounded. If it makes the thing asked for its object, faith itself will dissolve if the Lord's answer is no, not yet or wait. In thee, O LORD, do I put my trust: let me never be put to confusion (Ps. 71:1, KJV). D — Elisabeth Elliot

Absolute liberty ... tends to corrupt absolutely. — Gertrude Himmelfarb

Once war becomes a clash of absolutes, there is no breathing room for mercy. Absolute truth is blind truth. — Deepak Chopra

The Absolute cannot be divided. — Swami Vivekananda

God reveals to His prophets that there are moral absolutes. Sin will always be sin. Disobedience to the Lord's commandments will always deprive us of His blessings. The world changes constantly and dramatically, but God, His commandments, and promised blessings do not change. They are immutable and unchanging. — L. Tom Perry

Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter's stomach, is an absolute. — Ayn Rand

First off, faith is not about concrete answers, religious absolutes, creeds, or dogma. Faith is about the search for understanding, the raising of important questions, the open honesty of having doubt, and the realization that no one has it all completely right nor does any human, human religious teaching, or theology hold all the answers. — Jarrod Cochran

I haven't turned into an absolute geek who doesn't like doing fun things. — Kevin Pietersen

We are at a time when postmodernism defies certainty, truth, and meaning; when spiritualism dabbles in quantum theory; and when randomness has become the order of the day. Isn't it ironic that at the same time, the world is on the edge of financial bankruptcy because we have conducted our financial affairs in a random fashion, as if there are no absolutes? — Ravi Zacharias

To be different is to have value. In this sense all things have equal, absolute value. Each thing has absolute value and thus is equal to everything else. — Shunryu Suzuki

The diamond absolutes.
I am neither internee nor informer;
An inner emigre, grown long-haired
And thoughtful; a wood-kerne
Escaped from the massacre,
Taking protective colouring
From bole and bark, feeling
Every wind that blows;
Who, blowing up these sparks
For their meagre heat, have missed
The once-in-a-lifetime portent,
The comet's pulsing tose. — Seamus Heaney

I don't know yet. I might be. Age sixteen totally sucks when it comes to absolutes. — T.M. Goeglein

Very well," she said after a moment. "Here is how I see that loyalty and love are the same: You would lay down your life for someone for reasons of both love and loyalty. But loyalty implies dependence, doesn't it? For instance, dogs are loyal. It also implies indebtedness. For instance, servants are loyal."
"It also implies integrity. And honor. And - "
"Steadfastness," she completed, with only a hint of irony.
"So you see them as absolutes then, Miss Redmond? Love means to be willing to die for someone, and loyalty perhaps the same?"
"How can they be otherwise? — Julie Anne Long

Eternity is the Absolute present. — D.T. Suzuki

When Christian absolutes were the basis of society, immoral activities such as homosexual or lesbian lifestyles and abortion were outlawed. There has been a fundamental shift. Our society is now based on a relative morality: that is, a person can do what he likes and is answerable to no one but himself as long as the majority of people can be persuaded that their interests are not being threatened. This relative morality results in society being told that no one can say anything against those who choose to be sexual deviants, to be public nudists, or to do whatever they want (largely within the confines of the law, which is also changing to become more tolerant of people's actions). — Ken Ham

There is no pleasing New Englanders, my dear, their soil is all rocks and their hearts are bloodless absolutes. — John Updike

The problem is that it has become politically awkward to draw attention to absolutes of bad and good. In place of manners, we now have doctrines of political correctness, against which one offends at one's peril: by means of a considerable circular logic, such offences mark you as reactionary and therefore a bad person. Therefore if you say people are bad, you are bad. — Lynne Truss

Truth is always unfolding. It's not an absolute. — Alan Arkin

In his world, there was right and wrong, good and evil. Hers contained no absolutes. Hers was a world of grays. Hers was what his was truly becoming. The irony didn't escape him. At night, nothing was clear. Lines blurred. Shadows removed definitions.
Her dreams led her to the darkest parts of London where he couldn't follow and keep her safe. His dreams had ceased to exist long ago. — Lorraine Heath

Until we realise ourselves as the Absolute, we cannot attain to deliverance. — Swami Vivekananda

I had always looked upon the search for the absolute as the noblest and most worth while task of science. — Max Planck

THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD is beautifully written, perfectly paced, expertly structured, and simply unputdownable. Koryta is an absolute master. — Deon Meyer

The Absolute cannot be worshipped, so we must worship a manifestation. — Swami Vivekananda

My business is not to remake myself, but to make the absolute best of what God made. — Robert Browning

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack. — Keith Olbermann

People often indiscriminately use absolutes in their utterances: every, everyone, everything, all, always, never, no one, nothing. Rarely are these absolute terms justified. — Robert J. Gula

Learn the absolute pleasure of kindness. — Perry Brass

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

After years of seeing the world in absolutes, he has taught me how to pick out all the shades of possibilities. — Jodi Picoult

As noble as our intentions might be as we assume a leadership role, we are always one errant, unthinking action or careless word away from getting outside the boundaries of good judgment or even the moral absolutes that must frame all decisions. — Tim Irwin

The only absolute truth is change, and death is the only way to stop change. Life is a series of judgments on changing situations, and no ideal, no belief fits every solution. Yet humans need to believe in something beyond themselves. Perhaps all intelligences do. If we do not act on higher motivations, then we can justify any action, no matter how horrible, as necessary for our survival. We are endlessly caught between the need for high moral absolutes - which will fail enough that any absolute can be demonstrated as false - and our tendency for individual judgments to degenerate into self-gratifying and unethical narcissism. Trying to force absolutes on others results in death and destruction, yet failing to act beyond one's self also leads to death and destruction, generally a lot sooner. — L.E. Modesitt Jr.

I do not rest on the broad upland of a system that includes a series of sure statements about the absolutes, but on a narrow, rocky ridge between the gulfs where there is no sureness of expressible knowledge but [only] the certainty of meeting what remains, undisclosed. — Martin Buber