Relativism Quotes

“When we teach people that suspending moral judgments is a virtue, the necessary outcome is moral horror.”
― Peter Boghossian

“Man is the measure of all things”
― Protagoras

“The problem with classical disembodied scientific realism is that it takes two intertwined and inseparable dimensions of all experience - the awareness of the experiencing organism and the stable entities and structures it encounters - and erects them as separate and distinct entities called subjects and objects. What disembodied realism ... misses is that, as embodied, imaginative creatures, we never were separated or divorced from reality in the first place. What has always made science possible is our embodiment, not our transcendence of it, and our imagination, not our avoidance of it.”
― George Lakoff, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought

“To put it schematically, the claim "Everything is subjective" must be nonsense, for it would itself have to be either subjective or objective. But it can't be objective, since in that case it would be false if true. And it can't be subjective, because then it would not rule out any objective claim, including the claim that it is objectively false.”
― Thomas Nagel, The Last Word

“We find that in the absence of demonstrable truth, the best we can do is to exercise the greatest diligence, humility, insight, intelligence, and industry in trying to arrive at the nearest values to truth. I hope, of course, to argue convincingly that having done this, we have an inescapable duty to seek to inculcate others with these values.”
― William F. Buckley Jr., God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom'

“Any truth must be in a humanly conceptualized and understandable form if it is to be a truth for us. If it's not a truth for us, how can we make sense of its being a truth at all?”
― George Lakoff, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought

“Truth is only relative to those that ignore hard evidence.”
― A.E. Samaan

“Socrates : Then would he not be conceding that his own opinion is false, if he grants that the opinion of those who think he is in error is true?
Theodorus : Necessarily.
Socrates : But the others do not concede that they are in error, do they?
Theodorus : No, they do not.
Socrates : And he, in turn, according to his writings, grants that this opinion also is true.
Theodorus : Evidently.
Socrates : Then all men, beginning with Protagoras, will dispute—or rather, he will grant, after he once concedes that the opinion of the man who holds the opposite view is true—even Protagoras himself, I say, will concede that neither a dog nor any casual man is a measure of anything whatsoever that he has not learned. Is not that the case?
Theodorus : Yes.
Socrates : Then since the “truth” of Protagoras is disputed by all, it would be true to nobody, neither to anyone else nor to him.
[171b-c]”
― Plato, Theaetetus

“I have a tendency to break rules and shake things up. I would say that with me people never know what is real and what is fiction. And I like that because reality is relative.”
― Nuno Roque

“The only consistent response for a relativist is, "Pushing morality is wrong for me, but that's just my personal opinion, and has nothing to do with you. Please ignore me.”
― Gregory Koukl, Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions

“How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green!
ANT. The ground indeed is tawny.
SEB. With an eye of green in 't.
ANT. He misses not much.
SEB. No; he doth but mistake the truth totally.”
― William Shakespeare, The Tempest

“Relative truths can also be absolute.


Relative absolute truths are like two people looking at the same coin, from two different sides, each sees a different truth and presumes they are looking at the same coin, and yet neither side can see the third side.”
― Caesar J. B. Squitti, The Jesus Christ Code: The LIGHT: The Rainbow of Truths

“The doctrine of Relativity is carried to a fallacious pitch, when applied to prove that there must be something absolute, because the Relative must suppose the non- Relative. If there be Relation, it is said, there must be something Un-related, or above all relation. But Relation cannot in this way, be brought round on itself, except by a verbal juggle. Relation means that every conscious state has a correlative state ; which brings us at last to a couple (the subject-mind, and the object or extended world). This is the final end of all possible cognition. We may view the two facts separately or together; and we may call the conjunct view an Absolute (as Ferrier does), but this adds nothing to our knowledge. A self-contradiction is committed by inferring from * everything is relative,' that * something is non-relative.'

Fallacies of Relativity often arise in the hyperboles of Rhetoric. In order to reconcile to their lot the more humble class of manual labourers, the rhetorician proclaims the dignity of all labour, without being conscious that if all labour is dignified, none is ; dignity supposes inferior grades ; a mountain height is abolished if all the surrounding plains are raised to the level of its highest peak. So, in spurring men to industry and perseverance, examples of distinguished success are held up for universal imitation ; while, in fact, these cases owe their distinction to the general backwardness.”
― Alexander Bain, Logic: Deductive And Inductive

“Maybe nothing is completely true, and not even that.”
― Multatuli, Ideeën

“Dengan relativisme begitu kita tidak dapat maju selangkah pun. Setiap orang punya selera subjektif masing-masing. Lalu, apa jadinya? Anarki, dan ini liberalisme ekstrem yang tidak kita setujui.”
― Y.B. Mangunwijaya, Burung-Burung Rantau

“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

“Who can say they saw a whole play or read a whole book? Each has their own experience, their own play, their own book”
― Johnny Rich, The Human Script

“Since the fall of the human race, we've been alternately telling ourselves that we are good, that if we try hard enough we'll be good enough, or that being or that being good is an impossibility, so we should just give up and have fun.”
― Elyse M. Fitzpatrick, Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus

“It is arrogant to believe that you know what is true for you. Surely you know in your own life with you that you cannot be trusted.”
― Matt Chandler

“Možda sam rekao da on ponekad baš i nije potpuno po mom ukusu, ali čak ni ja ponekad. nisam potpuno po svom ukusu, nije to neko merilo.”
― Đorđe Balašević

“Gray areas are just the inability to distinguish between darkness and light.”
― Ron Brackin

“This capacity for objectivity and absoluteness amounts to an existential — and “preventive” — refutation of the ideologies of doubt: if a man is able to doubt, it is because there is certainty; likewise the very notion of illusion proves that man has access to reality. It follows that there are necessarily some men who know reality and who therefore have certainty; and the great spokesmen of this knowledge and certainty are necessarily the best of men. For if truth were on the side of doubt, the individual who doubted would be superior not only to these spokesmen, who have not doubted, but also to the majority of normal men across the millennia of human existence. If doubt conformed to the real, human intelligence would be deprived of its sufficient reason, and man would be less than an animal, for the intelligence of animals does not doubt the reality to which it is proportioned.”
― Frithjof Schuon, Logic & Transcendence

“It is difficult to decide what you mean when you say any of these words and easy to claim that anyone else’s meaning is (or is not) the right one. There is a built-in indeterminacy in our use of language that allows us to shift responsibility for actions in Paris away from a religion to a minor strand in a religion, or to the actions of only those who pulled the trigger. This is the universal problem of secularism, which eschews stereotyping. It leaves unclear who is to be held responsible for what. By devolving all responsibility on the individual, secularism tends to absolve nations and religions from responsibility.”
― George Friedman

“Ach panenkomarjá, ten život je stejně k zešílení krásnej. Ne že by byl, ale já to tak vidím.”
― Bohumil Hrabal

“Možda sam rekao da on ponekad baš i nije potpuno po mom ukusu, ali čak ni ja ponekad
nisam potpuno po svom ukusu, nije to neko merilo...”
― Đorđe Balašević, Jedan od onih života

“Možda sam rekao da on ponekad baš i nije potpuno po mom ukusu, ali čak ni ja ponekad nisam potpuno po svom ukusu, nije to neko merilo...”
― Đorđe Balašević, Jedan od onih života

“What I find particularly hypocritical and dishonest is the suggestion that secularism is synonym for “doubt” and “tolerance”, as opposed to the certainty and intolerance of religion.
Since the French Revolution, secularism, when translated into social or political action, has hardly been a synonym for tolerance and scepticism, but has been instead unfailingly characterised by a presumption to occupy the moral high ground which entitles to deal out moral judgments. This self-righteousness has often extended to a point that its proponents have not hesitated to execute those who dare to dissent from the new received orthodoxy, with an unwavering certainty that they are fulfilling the momentous mission of promoting social and moral progress.

It is perhaps worth reminding that communism – an ideological monster responsible for, within just a few short decades, mass murders on a scale previously unprecedented in human history – is a political manifestation of the idea of a secular society. Marxist communist ideologies are intrinsically linked to the notion of a state sponsored, and enforced, secularism. 3 Communism has never struck me as particularly tolerant or imbued with scepticism. It is indeed a shame that the ruthless dictators of state atheism – such as Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot - before butchering tens of millions of people, did not doubt for an instant of doing the right thing.”
― Giorgio Roversi, The Amorality of Atheism

“Terrorism is the war of the weak and war is the terrorism of the strong.”
― Martin Bell, Through Gates of Fire: A Journey into World Disorder

“The dominant philosophy in today’s public university is called relativism, which categorically denies the existence of truth or moral absolutes. Those who are foolish enough to believe in such archaic notions as biblical authority or the claims of Christ are to be pitied—or bullied.”
― James C. Dobson, Life on the Edge: The Next Generation's Guide to a Meaningful Future

“Non c’è più lo spazio che «contiene» il mondo e non c’è più il tempo «lungo il quale» avvengono gli eventi. Ci sono solo processi elementari dove quanti di spazio e materia interagiscono tra loro in continuazione. L’illusione dello spazio e del tempo continui attorno a noi è la visione sfocata di questo fitto pullulare di processi elementari.”
― Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics