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The only difference between causation and the value is that the word "cause" implies absolute certainty whereas the implied meaning of "value" is one of preference. In classical science it was supposed that the world always works in terms of absolute certainty and that "cause" is the more appropriate word to describe it. But in modern quantum physics all that is changed. Particles "prefer" to do what they do. An individual particle is not absolutely committed to one predictable behavior. What appears to be an absolute cause is just a very consistent pattern of preferences.
Robert M. PirsigThe last thing our founding fathers wanted was to be ruled by king with absolute power, and the next to the last thing they wanted was to be ruled by a temporary king with absolute powers for four years.
Patrick LeahyThere are absolute atheists ... Absolute atheism is in no way a mere absence of belief in God. It is rather a refusal of God, a fight against God, a challenge to God.
Jacques MaritainAbsolute freedom is absolute nonsense! We gain freedom in anything through commitment, discipline, and fixed habit.
Richard J. FosterI believe in absolute freedom of conscience for all men and equality of all churches, all sects and all beliefs before the law as a matter of right and not as a matter of favor. I believe in the absolute separation of church and state and in the strict enforcement of the Constitution that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof I believe that no tribunal of any church has any power to make any decree of any force in the law of the land, other than to establish the status of its own communicants within its own church.
Al SmithMarriage has a unique place because it speaks of an absolute faithfulness, a covenant between radically different persons, male and female; and so it echoes the absolute covenant of God with his chosen, a covenant between radically different partners.
Rowan WilliamsIn this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil," the man said. "Good and evil are not fixed, stable entities, but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such was the way of the world that Dostoevsky depicted in The Brothers Karamazov. The most important thing is to maintain the balance between the constantly moving good and evil. If you lean too much in either direction, it becomes difficult to maintain actual morals. Indeed, balance itself is the good.
Haruki MurakamiThe United States has an absolute, uncompromising commitment to Israel's security and an absolute conviction that Israel alone must decide the steps necessary to ensure that security. That is Israel's prerogative. We accept that. We endorse that. Whatever Israel decides cannot, will not, will never, not ever, alter our fundamental commitment to her security.
Al GoreWhat is the Absolute? Something that appears to us in fleeting experiences--say, through the gentle smile of a beautiful woman, or even through the warm caring smile of a person who may otherwise seem ugly and rude. In such miraculous but extremely fragile moments, another dimension transpires through our reality. As such, the Absolute is easily corroded;it slips all too easily through our fingers and must be handled as carefully as a butterfly
Slavoj ลฝiลพekIn prayer the soul comes nearest the experience of absolute love: in belief it ascends by means of symbols towards absolute truth.
Evelyn UnderhillI concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had the about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness.
Rowan WilliamsFreedom is a state of mind, I said wondering where I'd heard it before, not a state of being. We are all slaves to gravity and morality and the vicissitudes of nature. Our genes govern us much more than we'd like to think. Our bodies can not know absolute freedom but our minds can, can at least try.
Walter MosleyThe gospel of Jesus Christ must be the bad news of the conviction of sin before it can be the Good News of redemption. The truth is revealed in God's Holy Word; life can be lived only in absolute and disciplined submission to its authority.
Charles ColsonSatire must always accompany any free society. It is an absolute necessity. Even in the most repressive medieval kingdoms, they understood the need for the court jester, the one soul allowed to tell the truth through laughter. It is, in many ways, the most powerful form of free speech because it is aimed at those in power, or those whose ideas would spread hate. It is the canary in the coalmine, a cultural thermometer, and it always has to push, push, push the boundaries of society to see how much itโs grown.
Joe RandazzoThe Perennial Philosophy is expressed most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula, tat tvam asi ('That art thou'); the Atman, or immanent eternal Self, is one with Brahman, the Absolute Principle of all existence; and the last end of every human being, is to discover the fact for himself, to find out who he really is.
Aldous HuxleyRealize that the Silence offers an ever available and almost unlimited opportunity for awakening the highest conception of Truth. Try to comprehend that Omnipotence itself is absolute silence; all else is change, activity, limitation. Silent thought concentration is therefore the true method of reaching, awakening and then expressing the wonderful potential power of the world within.
Charles F. HaanelWho has that absolute trust, to fling yourself into mortality, to let it do with you as it will, with all the permutations and possibilities of as it will, be it horror or ecstasy or boredom?
Frederick LenzArt and literature need extreme sociality to a degree that even dolphins don't have. We are the only large mammalian species that has such intense sociality. There are some small mammals that have become eusocial - the mole rats - but that's a different thing. Humans are able to understand one another at very high levels, to cooperate in very large groups. Humans depend on one another in ways that are an absolute precondition to sharing the kinds of information that makes narrative possible.
Brian BoydThe first thing to say about Eve is that she was a big improvement on the Adam design, or that Adam was an extremely misguided variation on the Eve design. (Consider testicles. Two concentrated nuclei of absolute vulnerability. Where? Dangling between the legs. I rest my case.)
Glen DuncanOne must not allow oneself to skid down to isolationism and unbridled economic egoism. ... The second possible mistake would be excessive interference into the economic life of the country. And the absolute faith into the all-mightiness of the state.
Vladimir PutinThere are few times when we know with absolute certainty we are going to do something for the last time. Life has a way of moving in circles, bringing us back to places we didnโt expect and taking us away from those we do. There are too many times we donโt pay close enough attention, and moments are lost in our assumption weโll have another chance.
Megan HartI don't think scientists can dictate from above what we should do, because it's not a matter of scientific decision. If you want to have everybody living like a Beverly Hills millionaire, then 2 billion people might be too many. If we want to have a battery-chicken kind of world, with everybody having an absolute minimum diet, you might be able to support 10 billion.
Paul R. EhrlichTo be an outstanding musician, you have to be very attentive to the smallest detail and willing to have infinite patience in the pursuit of your ideal. You require absolute control and professionalism.
Yehudi MenuhinThe idea of absolute freedom is fiction. It's based on the idea of an independent self. But in fact, there's no such thing. There's no self without other people. There's no self without sunlight. There's no self without dew. And water. And bees to pollinate the food that we eat...So the idea of behaving in a way that doesn't acknowledge those reciprocal relationships is not really freedom, it's indulgence.
Peter CoyoteThe question occurred to me: Well, if that's so, if the Divine is ultimately formless and genderless, what's the big deal? Why all this bother? The bother is because we have no other way of speaking about the Absolute. We need forms and images. Without them we have no way of relating to the Divine. Symbol and image create a universal spiritual language. It's the language the soul understands.
Sue Monk KiddOnly a person with convictions has a genuine possibility to be tolerant. He who accepts no absolute values but clings to polite doubt cannot be tolerant but merely indifferent. He is morally defenseless in the face of evil.
Erik von Kuehnelt-LeddihnI say this because the Left has taken what passes for their principles as an absolute religion. They don't think anymore. They just react. When they have somebody like [Barack] Obama whom they put into office, they believed in the religious sense and, of course, that is a large part of the reason for their silence on these issues.
Nat HentoffDevotion is when your involvement with life is so absolute that you yourself do not matter anymore.
Jaggi VasudevThe people who illegally cross into the country are from countries that have very close ties to al Qaeda, whether it's Yemen or Afghanistan, Pakistan, China. It is an absolute national disgrace.
Rick PerryTo assume all the powers is not good for anybody. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. All those experiments have a bad ending.
Rafael CorreaHappiness and health must be earned by absolute control of the emotional nature.
Florence Scovel ShinnEvery State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.
Thomas Jefferson[Tom Cotton] has been an absolute champion of the idea of getting rid of Obamacare, scrapping the Affordable Care Act.
Rachel MaddowIt is very little to me to have the right to vote, to own property, etc., if I may not keep my body, and its uses, in my absolute right
Lucy StoneThere exists a mountain of circumstantial evidence that consciousness survives bodily death. This is the kind of evidence that would stand up in a court of law. Some people believe that science needs better tools to quantify what consciousness is. Perhaps when we discover what consciousness is we will be on the road to providing absolute scientific evidence that there is life after death.
Jean RitchieThe people who are pushing Jewish supremacism, Zionism โ they are absolute evil and they are crazy. All they know is more power, and so there is a real danger, I should say, for Syria , and a danger for Iran at this point.
David DukeA great factory with the machinery all working and revolving with absolute and rhythmic regularity and with the men all driven by one impulse, and moving in unison as though a constituent part of the mighty machine, is one of the most inspiring examples of directed force that the world knows. I have rarely seen the face of a mechanic in the action of creation which was not fine, never one which was not earnest and impressive.
Thomas Nelson PageKing Abdullah has died. A divisive figure in the Middle East. The sad irony is that the USA preached democracy in the face of absolute rule.
Immortal TechniqueMost writers flinch at the thought of being completely honest about themselves. So absolute honesty is what marks the true modern.
J. G. BallardMeet your obligations. But obligations never prevented anyone from following their dreams. Remember that you are a manifestation of the absolute, and do only those things in your life that are worth the effort. Only those who do that will understand the great transformations that are yet to be seen.
Paulo CoelhoIt seems to me now that mathematics is capable of an artistic excellence as great as that of any music, perhaps greater; not because the pleasure it gives (although very pure) is comparable, either in intensity or in the number of people who feel it, to that of music, but because it gives in absolute perfection that combination, characteristic of great art, of godlike freedom, with the sense of inevitable destiny; because, in fact, it constructs an ideal world where everything is perfect and yet true.
Bertrand RussellThe keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative.
Benito MussoliniI don't give a damn if you like Blackbeard. I don't care if you think he is an absolute despot. Do you believe me? If you do, I've done my work.
Ray StevensonIt [sin] cannot occur at any time nor in any form without his permission. While he does not actively originate it, he holds such absolute control over it that no single event in connection with it can take place without his permission
James Petigru Boyce