Consensus Theory Quotes & Sayings

It is the question that is also asked by modern political theory: Can politics accept truth as a structural category? Or must truth, as something unattainable, be relegated to the subjective sphere, its place taken by an attempt to build peace and justice using whatever instruments are available to power? By relying on truth, does not politics, in view of the impossibility of attaining consensus on truth, make itself a tool of particular traditions that in reality are merely forms of holding on to power?
And yet, on the other hand, what happens when truth counts for nothing? What kind of justice is then possible? Must there not be common criteria that guarantee real justice for all - criteria that are independent of the arbitrariness of changing opinions and powerful lobbies? Is it not true that the great dictatorships were fed by the power of the ideological lie and that only truth was capable of bringing freedom? — Pope Benedict XVI

This just gets worse and worse," Rob Pierre sighed as he skimmed Leonard Boardman's synopsis of his latest gleanings from the Solarian League reporters covering the PRH. "How can one person - one person, Oscar! - do this much damage? She's like some damned elemental force of nature!"
"Harrington?" Oscar Saint-Just quirked an eyebrow and snorted harshly at Pierre's nodded confirmation.
"She's just happened to be in the right places - or the wrong ones, I suppose, from our perspective - for the last, oh, ten years or so. That's the official consensus from my analysts, at least. The other theory, which seems to have been gaining a broader following of late, is that she's in league with the Devil. — David Weber

Men write many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but the fact remains that where every man has a voice, brutal laws are impossible — Mark Twain

Perfect Day:
It was a day filled with the glow of ordinary things & we passed them quietly from hand to hand for a long time & someone said she had picked a perfect day to be born & I think all of us felt the same. — Brian Andreas

Mickey Maus," William was saying, "is a nut about butter. The only time he ever lost his cool was when we were having a small brunch and we were down to our last three pounds of butter. He panicked. — Lilian Jackson Braun

The end of the world is on people's minds. We have the power to destroy or save ourselves, but the question is what do you do with that responsibility. — Nicolas Cage

Hope is lived when it comes alive, when we go outside of ourselves and, in joy and pain take part in the lives of others. — Jurgen Moltmann

Just as the body takes time to recover from an infection that has afflicted it, so the soul needs times of silence and solitude for its recovery from the insane pace of modern life. — Howard Baker

was restored to the throne at Apple, we put him on — Walter Isaacson

People need to be given enough so that they feel like they're not missing something. There's a thing that you have when you watch a movie where, if you feel like you're not following and you're going to get tested on it later, you're going to get disengaged. So, you have to give people just enough information, so that they're able to keep up with the story. — Mark Waters

A bicycle?" Amos leaned on the breakfast bar. "Sure. They don't need fuel, they don't get sick. Most of the repairs, you can handle on your own. You're looking for post-apocalyptic transportation, bikes are the way to go. — James S.A. Corey

I am what I am.........both as a result of people who respected me and helped me, and of those who did not respect me and treated me badly.

Nelson Mandela — Anthony Sampson

The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you, and in this way pass from feeling to meaning. It's not something that committees can do. It's not a task achieved by groups or by movements. It's done by individuals, each person mediating in some way between a sense of history and an experience of the world. — Robert Hughes

President Obama's FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, has a reputation in D.C. of being a 'tepid' regulator. From reports of his net neutrality proposal, he's living up to that reputation. — Marvin Ammori

When you want something you can't have, it's like a strong magnet. It can come to control you. — Geraldine Solon

Pyschoanalysts are fond of pointing out that the past is alive in the present. But the future is alive in the present too. The future is not some place we're going to, but an idea in our mind now. It is something we're creating, that in turn creates us. The future is a fantasy that shapes our present. — Stephen Grosz

It might not have been Mike,' she said, 'but somebody left something somewhere.'

I couldn't really argue with that. It was as succinct a summing up of the seeming randomness of events in life as I had ever heard. — Bob Tarte