ABSOLUTISM QUOTES III

quotations about absolutism

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We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate.

BARACK OBAMA

Tags: Barack Obama

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By its very nature absolutism is inconsistent with the natural rights that people bring into society when they engage in the mutual contract that brings that society into existence.

A. C. GRAYLING

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Every country has its own constitution; ours is absolutism moderated by assassination.

ANONYMOUS RUSSIAN

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Absolutism is much damned today. It's undemocratic -- damnable for that reason alone, even if its modern exemplars did not include genocidal tyrants the likes of Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. But Tsunayoshi and Louis were shaped by different times. A danger more dreadful than oppression loomed -- anarchy. Absolutism, to many, seemed an acceptable price to pay for order.

MICHAEL HOFFMAN

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From the perspective of absolutism, the physical and the social world are formed by many natural laws, which yield unchanging truths.

A. MEHDI RIAZI

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Islam in total emphasizes meaning over form, balance over extremity and reflection over reactionaryism, countering the absolutist mindset that seeks comfort in the simplicity of fixating on outward signs, symbols and labels. Doubt is not shunned in Islam but in fact encouraged and welcomed. Accordingly, based on this reading, the purpose of Islam is to counter man's absolutist tendency, which, in my estimation, is the main pillar of violent extremist ideology.

OZCAN KELES

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Absolutism typically confers "right" and "wrong" monikers on the parties to a conflict and seeks to assist the "right" actor in prevailing over the "wrong".... By taking sides, the absolutist approach incentivises incumbents into to-the-death defences of their positions.

MICHAEL HARRIS

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Absolutism is a dangerous path to go down, when you stop seeing people as people, and start seeing them as a caricature, you rob yourself and your opponent of humanity. And without our humanity, we are nothing.

MARK E. ANDERSON

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Socrates is not just expounding noble ideas in a vacuum. He is in the middle of a war between those who think truth is absolute and those who think truth is relative. He is fighting that war with everything he has.

ROBERT M. PIRSIG

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Absolutism is an ideological tax haven, a place to harbor your beliefs free from the taxing challenge of learning new things and refining them.

JEREMY SHERMAN

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The controversy over the difference (or lack of one) between absolutism and despotism accompanies the whole history of absolute monarchy. The condition of subject will be retrospectively identified with that of the slave, and subjection with "slavery," from the point of view of the new citizen and his revolution (this will also be an essential mechanism of his own idealization).

ÉTIENNE BALIBAR

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Absolutism is often the seed of extremist ideology.

IMELDA SAAD

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We sometimes imagine morality can be a set of moral absolutes: Thou shalt not kill or Thou shalt not commit adultery. In practice such absolutism is always mitigated by circumstances. Thou shalt not kill becomes -- Thou shalt not kill except in self defense. Or -- Thou shalt not kill except when drafted into the army and told to do so.

MARTIN FRITZ

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Absolutism is fragile: it can also, paradoxically, enable progress.

LUCY HUGHES-HALLETT

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A sensible, mature society recognizes that extreme, destructive positions in the name of constitutional absolutism is just another form of fundamentalism; it seeks to prevent even the consideration of reasonable, responsive policies to address national problems by declaring them preemptively out of line.

EDITORS

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Absolutism, in effect, seems to give a complete and coherent form to a power that is founded only upon itself, and that is founded as being without limits (thus uncontrollable and irresistible by definition). Such a power truly makes men into subjects, and nothing but subjects, for the very being of the subject is obedience.

ÉTIENNE BALIBAR

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Absolutism is a dangerous path to go down, when you stop seeing people as people, and start seeing them as a caricature, you rob yourself and your opponent of humanity. And without our humanity, we are nothing.

MARK E. ANDERSON

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It seems as if, at least in some ways and in some quarters of society, absolutism is on the upswing in America. As society becomes more diverse and life-style choices more wide ranging, absolutism can seem to be a port in an ever-raging storm.

JAMES C. ALEXANDER

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Comparing democratic and monarchical absolutism, we shall find that the latter must needs rest its power somewhere without the monarch himself; for, as has been several times observed, the monarch had personally no more power than the meanest of the crowd. He must be supported by opinion without him; but democratic absolutism is power itself -- it is a reality -- fearfully sweeping power. It is a real power, a torrent which nothing can stem. If an individual opposes monarchical absolutism, there is something heroic in it in the eyes of the people; if a man opposes democratic absolutism, he is at once considered a heretic, a traitor to the common weal.

FRANCIS LIEBER

Tags: democracy

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The absolutists are more often than not fighting for a right to peddle hate, bigotry.

SWATI CHATURVEDI

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