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Pluralism Quotes

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Pluralism Quotes

“Human beings evolved to live in small bands with people more or less like themselves. But today, many of us live in wonderfully pluralistic societies. In America, Europe, India, and many other places, we're trying to build mass multicultural democracies, societies that contain people from diverse races and ethnicities, with different ideologies and backgrounds. To survive, pluralistic societies require citizens who can look across difference and show the kind of understanding that is a prerequisite of trust—who can say, at the very least, “I’m beginning to see you. Certainly, I will never fully experience the world as you experience it, but I’m beginning, a bit, to see the world through your eyes.”

UnderstandingHuman BeingsGroupsTrustDiversityMulticulturalismPluralismCommunitiesDemocracies
Book:How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
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“With regard to religious belief, [Adam] Michnik admitted that 'only those forms of religious belief that are "anti-values," that lead to fanaticism and intolerance, are objectionable' and should therefore be opposed. 'I would nevertheless be afraid to live in a world without conservative institutions and values,' he confessed, speaking like a true moderate. 'A world devoid of tradition would be nonsensical and anarchic. The human world should be constructed from a permanent conflict between conservatism and contestation; if either is absent from a society, pluralism is destroyed.”

ReligionFaithHumanismDialogueModerationConservatismPluralism
Book:Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes
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“Pluralism is Civilizational Emergency (Sonnet 2609-2610) Mainstream earth history, which is systematically bloated with euro philosophy, euro theology, euro morality, is corrupted to the bone, all propagated as carrier of truth, while in fact, europe is the cradle of lies and cruelty - the human race comes from Africa, but inhumanity originated in Europe. Indigenous people wear animal skin as clothes, it's called uncivilized, privileged people wear the same skin, expensively processed in chemicals, and it's called fashion. Arabic is one of the rarest soulful languages spoken by the human race, yet in the hands of eurocentric propaganda apes are conditioned like pavlov's dogs into believing it to be the most sinister. Europe did give us pragmatism, which has its place but only as a toddler among the constellations of civilizations - empathy originated in Mother Africa, naturalism originated in Latin America, divine love originated in Arabia, equilibrium originated in China, integration originated in India. Pluralism is not a polite idealism, pluralism is civilizational emergency. Divided we are space-racing monkeys, integrated we are Upright Humanity.”

DiversityToleranceColonialismMulticulturalismWhite SupremacySecularismDecolonizationIndigenous PeoplePluralismIslamophobia
Book:With Love From A Blue Rock
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“The Uncultured Idiot (Sonnet 2501-2502) My roots run deep down to the core of earth, spread across the bones and marrow of the human race. Starting out with an insatiable spark of expansion, I spent my early teens devouring scriptures, then my late teens and early twenties I spent assimilating neuroscience and psychology, but it wasn't until my late twenties, a few years after my first publication, that the original Naskarian voice started to awaken, a voice not only beyond nation, religion and culture, but also beyond eurocentric intellectual convention. So many things were unfolding in my mind at once, that it's impossible for me to piece together a coherent timeline of events. But one thing was most striking, it's that, influence of the puny eurocentric schools of thought was beginning to wear off, as cultures of the world found an ideal vessel with zero chains of tribalism. I became empty and let the world pour its wonders into me, so it did, and I burn day in, day out, and each time from the ashes a new pluralist text is born, blasting all archaic, elitist and exclusivist narrative.”

DiversityToleranceSufismNondualityIntegrationAdvaitaMulticulturalismAssimilationInclusivePluralism
Book:Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot
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“Pilgrimage to Plurality (Sonnet 2499) Forget the canon, you can't even make sense of my titles, bleating like nationalist livestock, and chanting like brainless bacon - you have to have a certain amount of multicultural tendency, which in a way, is your first test of pilgrimage, moreover, it's the key to the Naskar Canon. If you have no desire to step outside your culture, there's no point in grabbing any of my text, you might as well pick up a chinese or arab text, and expect to be an expert while speaking only English. My script may be English, my language is not - remove your assumptions, transcend your disciplines; it is only through pilgrimage to plurality, that an ape ascends into humanity. My goal is not to replace white supremacy with colored supremacy, or christian supremacy with muslim supremacy, or blind faith with dispassionate logic, I am a stateless weaver of human plurality.”

DiversityToleranceIntegrationMulticulturalismInclusiveUnity In DiversityPluralismPoet ActivistMonk ScientistNaskar Canon
Book:Sonnets From The Mountaintop
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“A love of neighbor manifests itself in the tolerance not only of opinions of others but, what is more important, of the essence and uniqueness of others, when we subscribe to that religious philosophy of life that insists that God has made each man and woman an individual sacred personality endowed with a specific temperament, created with differing needs, hungers, dreams. This is a variegated, pluralistic world where no two stars are the same and every snowflake has its own distinctive pattern. God apparently did not want a regimented world of sameness. That is why creation is so manifold. So it is with us human beings. Some are born dynamic and restless; others placid and contemplative…One man’s temperament is full throated with laughter; another’s tinkles with the sad chimes of gentle melancholy. Our physiques are different, and that simple difference oftentimes drives us into conflicting fulfillment of our natures, to action or to thought, to passion or to denial, to conquest or to submission. There is here no fatalism of endowment. We can change and prune and shape the hedges of our being, but we must rebel against the sharp shears being wielded by other hands, cutting off the living branches of our spirits in order to make our personalities adornments for their dwellings.”

AcceptanceDiversityPluralism
Author:Joshua Loth Liebman
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“Walter Mignolo terms and articulates _critical cosmopolitanism, juxtaposing it with globalization, which is a process of "the homogeneity of the planet from above––economically, politically and culturally." Although _globalization from below_ is to counter _globalization from above_ from the experience and perspective of those who suffer from the consequences of _globalization from above_, cosmopolitanism differs, according to Mignolo, form these two types of globalization. Mignolo defines globalization as 'a set of designs to manage the world,' and cosmopolitanism as 'a set of projects toward planetary conviviality”

ReligionRaceSilenceChristianityClassFeminismTeachingHuman RightsGenderSexualityTheologyLgbtqRhetoricGlobalizationModernityDifferencePluralismReligious StudiesCosmopolitanismPostcolonialismCosmopolitanPostcolonialReligious PluralismCultural AlibiEcumenicalEpdagogyGender JusticeIntereligious DialogueWalter Mignolo
Book:Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
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“Whenever one comes to the the table for interreligous dialogue, there is what I would call an _ecumenical taboo_ that one has to comply with. The ecumenical taboo_ does not exist in a written document, but people tend to practice it around the dialogue table. One should not raise, for instance, such questions as gender justice, sexual orientation issues, religious constructions of the other, multiple forms of violence in a religious community, or religious cooperation with neo/imperialism. each religion has its own _history of sin_ that has justified and perpetuated oppression and exclusion of certain groups of people through its own religious teaching, doctrine, and practice. In order to be _nice_ and _tolerant_ to one another, interreligious dialogue has not challenged the fundamental issues of injustice that a particular religion has practiced, justified, and perpetuated in various ways. I do not disregard that most ecumenists have based interreligious dialogue on a politics of tolerance, and this has played a significant role in easing the antagonism between religions, at least among the leaders of established religions. However, we should ground an authentic ecumenism and theology of religion in a _politics of affirmation and transformation, rather than a politics of tolerance_.”

ReligionRaceSilenceChristianityClassFeminismTeachingHuman RightsGenderSexualityLgbtqRhetoricDifferencePluralismReligious StudiesCosmopolitanismEcumenismCosmopolitanReligious PluralismCultural AlibiEcumenicalEpdagogyGender JusticeIntereligious DialogueTheology Of WorkOikoumeneWcc
Book:Cosmopolitan Theology: Reconstituting Planetary Hospitality, Neighbor-Love, and Solidarity in an Uneven World
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“The message of Islam is by no means a closed value system at variance or conflict with other value systems. From the very start, the Prophet did not conceive the content of his message as the expression of pure otherness versus what the Arabs or the other societies of his time were producing. Islam does not establish a closed universe of reference but rather relies on a set of universal principles that can coincide with the fundamentals and values of other beliefs and religious traditions (even those produced by a polytheistic society such as that of Mecca at the time). Islam is a message of justice that entails resisting oppression and protecting the dignity of the oppressed and the poor, and Muslims must recognize the moral value of a law or contract stipulating this requirement, whoever its authors and whatever the society, Muslim or not. Far from building an allegiance to Islam in which recognition and loyalty are exclusive to the community of faith, the Prophet strove to develop the believer's conscience through adherence to principles transcending closed allegiances in the name of a primary loyalty to universal principles themselves. The last message brings nothing new to the affirmation of the principles of human dignity, justice, and equality: it merely recalls and confirms them. As regards moral values, the same intuition is present when the Prophet speaks of the equalities of individuals before and in Islam: 'The best among you [as to their human and moral qualities] during the era before Islam [al-jahiliyyah] are the best in Islam, provided they understand it [Islam].' The moral value of a human being reaches far beyond belonging to a particular universe of reference; within Islam, it requires added knowledge and understanding in order to grasp properly what Islam confirms (the principle of justice) and what it demands should be reformed (all forms of idol worship).”

ValuesJusticeDemocracyIslamEqualityMoralsMuhammadCoexistencePluralism
Book:In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad
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“Pluralism, transparency, separation of powers, and the rule of law are obstacles that prevents autocracy's triumph. In return, autocracy deceives the masses with its spectacular lies to bypass democracy and builds its legitimacy on these promises. At the same time, it forbids even two people from talking each other in private, so as not to spoil its spells. That is why, in authoritarian regimes, at least one person is recruited as an agent from each household. But a naive child who may rat out everything that he/she hears at home is an irreplaceable agent. -To be tried as a Jew-”

LawDemocracyGenocideFascismChildHolocaustPluralismAgent
Author:Jeyhun Aliyev Silo
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“It is not American Jews who have betrayed their Israeli cousins. It is the Netanyahu-led Israeli government that has betrayed Jews outside Israel, by aligning itself with nationalist parties in countries like Poland and Hungary, who are hostile to the ideals that make it possible for Jews in the diaspora to live free of persecution.”

IsraelNationalismPolandJewishPluralismHungaryAntisemitism
Book:The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump's America
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“Cosmopolitanism must manage the contradiction between its ethos of transcending ethnicity and its need for cultural diversity, which requires ethnic attachment. Bourne resolved this by splitting the world into two moral planes, one for a ‘parental’ majority who would be asked to shed their ethnicity and oppose their own culture, and the other for childlike minorities, who would be urged to embrace their heritage in the strongest terms.”

ImmigrationMulticulturalismPluralismEthnic Conflict
Book:Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities
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“Page 244: The Jewish involvement in influencing immigration policy in the United States is especially noteworthy as an aspect of ethnic conflict. ... Throughout much of the period from 1881 to 1965, one Jewish interest in liberal immigration policies stemmed from a desire to provide a sanctuary for Jews fleeing from anti-Semitic persecutions in Europe and elsewhere. ... There is also evidence that Jews, much more than any other European-derived ethnic group in the United States, have viewed liberal immigration policies as a mechanism of ensuring that the United States would be a pluralistic rather than a unitary, homogeneous society (e.g., Cohen 1972). ... Pluralism serves internal Jewish interests because it legitimates the internal Jewish interest in rationalizing ... Jewish group commitment and non-assimilation, what Howard Sachar (1992, 427) terms its function in “legitimizing the preservation of a minority culture in the midst of a majority’s host society.” ... Ethnic and religious pluralism also serves external Jewish interests because Jews become just one of many ethnic groups. This results in the diffusion of political and cultural influence among the various ethnic and religious groups, and it becomes difficult or impossible to develop unified, cohesive groups of gentiles united in their opposition to Judaism. Historically, major anti-Semitic movements have tended to erupt in societies that have been, apart from the Jews, religiously or ethnically homogeneous.”

ImmigrationMulticulturalismPluralismEthnic Conflict
Book:The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements
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“Our social skills are currently inadequate to the pluralistic societies we are living in. In my job as a journalist, I often find myself interviewing people who tell me they feel invisible and disrespected: Black people feeling that the systemic inequities that affect their daily experiences are not understood by whites, rural people feeling they are not seen by coastal elites, people across political divides staring at each other with angry incomprehension, depressed young people feeling misunderstood by their parents and everyone else, privileged people blithely unaware of all the people around them cleaning their houses and serving their needs, husbands and wives in broken marriages who realize that the person who should know them best actually has no clue. Many of our big national problems arise from the fraying of our social fabric. If we want to begin repairing the big national ruptures, we have to learn to do the small things well.”

RelationshipsCompassionEmpathyPrivilegePluralismSocial SkillsMarginalizationFeeling Invisible
Book:How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
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“This stance makes no distinction between (1) the pluralistic standpoint of making sure people have equal rights and (2) the act of co-dependently making sure not to hurt anyone’s feelings, however irrational they may be. We need to stop that nonsense. Getting your feelings hurt, quite frankly, is the price of living a in a free society.”

PostmodernismPluralismGeneration XRational Spirituality
Book:More Likely to Quote Star Wars than the Bible: Generation X and Our Frustrating Search for Rational Spirituality
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“More recently, Karen Stenner, a behavioral economist who began researching personality traits two decades ago, has argued that about a third of the population in any country has what she calls an authoritarian predisposition, a word that is more useful than personality, because it is less rigid. An authoritarian predisposition, one that favors homogeneity and order, can be present without necessarily manifesting itself; its opposite, a “libertarian” predisposition, one that favors diversity and difference, can be silently present too. Stenner’s definition of authoritarianism isn’t political, and it isn’t the same thing as conservatism. Authoritarianism appeals, simply, to people who cannot tolerate complexity: there is nothing intrinsically “left-wing” or “right-wing” about this instinct at all. It is anti-pluralist. It is suspicious of people with different ideas. It is allergic to fierce debates. Whether those who have it ultimately derive their politics from Marxism or nationalism is irrelevant. It is a frame of mind, not a set of ideas.”

IdeologyComplexityLibertarianismAuthoritarianismPluralismPolitical Psychology
Book:Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism
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“In the moral realm, there is very little consensus left in Western countries over the proper basis of moral behavior. And because of the power of the media, for millions of men and women the only venue where moral questions are discussed and weighed is the talk show, where more often than not the primary aim is to entertain, even shock, not to think. When Geraldo and Oprah become the arbiters of public morality, when the opinion of the latest media personality is sought on everything from abortion to transvestites, when banality is mistaken for profundity because [it's] uttered by a movie star or a basketball player, it is not surprising that there is less thought than hype. Oprah shapes more of the nation's grasp of right and wrong than most of the pulpits in the land. Personal and social ethics have been removed from the realms of truth and structures of thoughts; they have not only been relativized, but they have been democratized and trivialized.”

WorldMediaMoralityWesternPluralismThe ChurchOprahThe Twentieth Century
Book:The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism
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“There is no clump called “I” moving from this spot to that spot, instant by instant. Rather, through particular encounters with particular people, within each encounter, within each transition, something called “I” makes its appearance. Thus it is that what seems to be an object outside yourself is, in reality, your complement, that which gives this instant of your life its glow.”

CommunityBuddhismEqualityOnenessIndividualismWorld PeaceZen BuddhismPluralismUniversalismUnicity
Book:Novice to Master: An Ongoing Lesson in the Extent of My Own Stupidity
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“At one moment, his eyes sparkled in the light and in the next they were enshrouded in shadow. What connected those bands of light and dark? Could they indeed have been distinct entities?”

PhilosophyLightDarkExistenceCreationMoralityPerceptionShadowGood And EvilEntityMetaphysicsDualityCognitionOntologyPluralismFaith And DoubtMigrationsIllusion Of SelfAshim ShankerChaos And OrderDon T Forget To Breathe
Book:Don't Forget to Breathe
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“Religious pluralism is a popular belief in Western culture. At first it sounds very inclusive, but it is really just as exclusive as any other claims. Religious pluralists are those who argue that the “real God” is actually a mix of the gods of all the religions combined (ie. the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Jehovah’s Witness; and we can even throw in ancient Greek gods). By mixing all the major religions, they are discounting the exclusive truth claims to which religions strictly adhere.”

ApologeticsPluralismReligionsWorld ReligionsRavi ZachariasExclusive TruthLead To GodTruth Claims
Book:Clear Minds & Dirty Feet: A Reason To Hope, A Message To Share
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“For reasons that will never be entirely clear, God has a soft spot for religious strangers, both as agents of divine blessing and recipients of divine grace - to the point that God sometimes chooses one of them over people who believe they should by all rights come first. This is a great mystery, but it does nothing to obscure the great commandment. In every circumstance, regardless of the outcome, the main thing Jesus has asked me to do is love God and my neighbor as religiously as I love myself. The minute I have that handled, I will ask for my next assignment. For now, my hands are full.”

LoveReligionRespecting OthersPluralismNeighbor Quotes
Book:Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others
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“I just think in this world of extreme religious pluralism, the great spectrum of things ranging from the healthy and the respectable, and the balance and the true and tried, you go down to quite bizarre things which are very risky for people, particularly people who are young or vulnerable or unable to discriminate.”

PeopleThinkingWorldYoungReligiousThis WorldBalanceHealthyExtremesVulnerableBizarreSpectrumRespectablePluralismPluralism Is
Author:Peter Hollingworth
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“The courts demand that every religious person must accommodate a single atheist who might be 'offended' at the favorable mention of God's name. But no atheist can be forced to accommodate a single religious person who might be offended by the atheist's unbelief, or who wants to be part of the pluralism and diversity about which liberals regularly speak, but which is not broad enough to embrace people who believe in God.”

PeopleWantBelievePersonsEnoughMightNamesSpeakReligiousDemandDiversityCourtEmbraceAtheistBroadsBelieve In GodOffendedAccommodateUnbeliefPluralismReligious Person
Author:Cal Thomas
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“My favorite single line from the Qur’an is from Surah 49:13, which says that God made us different nations and tribes that we may come to know one another, in the sense that diversity is holy and it was created by God. What we humans are meant to do with that diversity is engage in positive interaction with each other and come to know one another – because knowledge is holy and pluralism or positive engagement is holy.”

KnowsHumansMayMadeDifferentNationsLinesCommunicationHolyDiversityMy FavoriteEngagementInteractionTribesPluralismSingle Line
Author:Eboo Patel
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