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Universalism Quotes

Browse 52 quotes about Universalism.

Universalism Quotes

“Properly told, stories are able to operate on two levels. On the surface, they deal with particulars involving a range of facts related to a given time and place, a local culture and a social group--and it is these specifics that tend to bore us whenever they lie outside of our own experience. But then, a layer beneath the particulars, the universals are hidden: the psychological, social and political themes that transcend the stories' temporal and geographical settings and are founded on unvarying fundamentals of human nature.”

StoriesHuman NatureStorytellingSpecificsUniversalism
Book:The News: A User's Manual
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“I am a living representation of my species - I am not owned by any one culture, but all cultures live through me - I am not owned by any one belief system, but all belief systems are part of me - I am not owned by any one school of thought, but all schools of thought are born in me. However, at the same time I must admit, I have more ignorance than knowledge - I have had more failures than successes - I have had more impediments than aids - but my sight has always been wider than my abilities permit - and that's the reason why I exist as a beacon of universalism on the face of earth.”

KnowledgeAcceptanceDiversityHumanismExistentialismHumanistInclusionGlobal HarmonyAssimilationUniversalism
Book:Ain't Enough to Look Human
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“There’s no shortage of problems with the human race, yet vegans decide to prioritize animals over humanity. Others prioritize exotic minorities over everything else. People need to get their priorities straight. Focus on what’s important, not on what you are personally, subjectively into. You can’t turn humanity’s future into your love of pets, or your gender confusion, or whatever. It’s not about you. It’s about humanity.”

HumanityIndividualismCollectivismUniversalismVegansFirst World Problems
Book:Without the Mob, There Is No Circus
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“While we are threading our way through the vagaries of life, our shortage of reciprocity and solidarity may corner us into breaches of culpability. We can eschew this and kindle a dream of universalism that does not impose itself but emerges from the world's numerous cultural and topical particularities and enable us to compare, discern, and identify, allowing us to marvel at the diversity. In this way, we can embrace universal recognition, human understanding, peace of mind, and compassion with others and with ourselves. ("I only needed a light ")”

CompassionDiversityRecognitionSolidarityReciprocityCulturalUniversalismCulpabilityHuman UnderstandingParticularity
Author:Erik Pevernagie
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“And what shall we say of the man Christ Jesus? Who, that loves his brother, would not, upheld by the love of Christ, and with a dim hope that in the far-off time there might be some help for him, arise from the company of the blessed, and walk down into the dismal regions of despair, to sit with the last, the only unredeemed, the Judas of his race, and be himself more blessed in the pains of hell, than in the glories of heaven? Who, in the midst of the golden harps and the white wings, knowing that one of his kind, one miserable brother in the old-world-time when men were taught to love their neighbor as themselves, was howling unheeded far below in the vaults of the creation, who, I say, would not feel that he must arise, that he had no choice, that, awful as it was, he must gird his loins, and go down into the smoke and the darkness and the fire, traveling the weary and fearful road into the far country to find his brother?—who, I mean, that had the mind of Christ, that had the love of the Father?”

HellUniversalismApokatastasisUniversal Reconciliation
Book:Unspoken Sermons: Series I, II, III
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“Who, after all, is saying something more objectively atrocious, or more aggressively perverse? The person who claims that every newborn infant enters the world justly under the threat of eternal dereliction, and that a good God imposes or permits the imposition of a state of eternal agony on finite, created rational beings as part of the mystery of his love or sovereignty or justice? Or the person who observes that such ideas are cruel and barbarous and depraved? Which of these two should really be, if not ashamed of his or her words, at least hesitant, ambivalent, and even a little penitent in uttering them? And which has a better right to moral indignation at what the other has said? And, really, don’t these questions answer themselves? A belief does not merit unconditional reverence just because it is old, nor should it be immune to being challenged in terms commensurate to the scandal it seems to pose. And the belief that a God of infinite intellect, justice, love, and power would condemn rational beings to a state of perpetual torment, or would allow them to condemn themselves on account of their own delusion, pain, and anger, is probably worse than merely scandalous. It may be the single most horrid notion the religious imagination has ever conceived, and the most irrational and spiritually corrosive picture of existence possible. And anyone who thinks that such claims are too strong or caustic, while at the same time finding the traditional notion of a hell of everlasting suffering perfectly unobjectionable, needs to consider whether he or she is really thinking clearly about the matter at all. (from Public Orthodoxy, “In Defense of a Certain Tone of Voice”)”

HellUniversalismApokatastasisUniversal Salvation
Author:David Bentley Hart
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“I thought of the great spectrum of The Mecca--black people from Belize, black people with Jewish mothers, black people with fathers from Bangalore, black people from Toronto and Kingston, black people who spoke Russian, who spoke Spanish, who played Mongo Santamaría, who understood mathematics and sat up in bone labs, unearthing the mysteries of the enslaved. There was more out there than I had ever hoped for, and I wanted you to have it. I wanted you to know that the world in its entirety could never be found in schools, alone, nor on the streets, alone, nor in the trophy case. I wanted you to claim the whole world, as it is. I wanted "Tolstoy is the Tolstoy of the Zulus" to immediately be obvious to you.”

DiversityUniversalism
Author:Ta-Nehisi Coates
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“Sonnet of Enlightenment World is born when individual is born. Individual is born when collectivity is realized. Collectivity is realized when selfishness is erased. Selfishness is erased when love is universalized. Love is universalized when separation is destroyed. Separation is destroyed when superstition is crushed. Superstition is crushed when reason is nourished. Reason is nourished when correction is desired. Correction is desired when ignorance is recognized. Ignorance is recognized when arrogance is abolished. Arrogance is abolished when humility is fostered. Humility is fostered when simplicity is habit. Simplicity is habit when awareness awakens. Awareness awakens when expansion awakens.”

HumanityAwarenessAcceptanceIgnoranceEnlightenmentBigotrySelflessSonnetSelf CorrectionUniversalism
Book:Giants in Jeans: 100 Sonnets of United Earth
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“So I think it is demonstrated that the God being good, and the Lord powerful, they save with a righteousness and equality which extend to all that turn to Him, whether here or elsewhere. For it is not here alone that the active power of God is beforehand, but it is everywhere and is always at work.”

GodJusticeGraceMercyGospelHadesUniversalismUniversal SalvationHarrowing Of Hell
Book:Volume 12. The Writings of Clement of Alexandria
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“Actualization is not just the manifestation of your individual experience of the truth; it is your life interconnected with a tree’s life, a bird’s life, water’s life, spring’s life, autumn’s life, and the life of the whole universe.”

LifeUniverseNatureEnlightenmentOnenessLiberationNatural EnvironmentUniversalismSatoriUnicity
Book:Each Moment Is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time
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“In essence, everything and everyone is made up of the same universal energy: you, me, the chair I’m sitting on, the trees and birds I can see outside my window, the guy from Amazon that just dropped off a package at my door and the package he delivered. Everything is connected, everything is part of this universal life force, everything is made up of the same stuff.”

SpiritualSpiritualitySpiritual QuotesSpiritual GrowthSpiritual WisdomUniversalismSpiritual ConnectionUniversal ConsciousnessUniversal Energy
Book:The Cancer Misfit: A Guide to Navigating Life After Treatment
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“As far as I am concerned, anyone who hopes for the universal reconciliation of all creatures with God must already believe that this would be the best possible ending to the Christian story; and such a person has then no excuse for imagining that God could bring any but the best possible ending to pass without thereby being in some sense a failed creator.”

UniversalismUniversal Reconciliation
Book:That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation
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“He illuminates the landscape of society with an intense, ultra sensitive light and brings out a strange, hyperreal relief - a coherent reading, precisely like the light of a laser. The local is a shabby thing. There's nothing worse than bringing us back down to our own little corner, our own territory, the radiant promiscuity of the face to face. A culture which has taken the risk of the universal, must perish by the universal. Exile always offers a marvellous - pathetic or dramatic - distance, a distance which aids judgement, a serenity orphaned by its own world. Deterritorialization, on the other hand, is a demented deprivation. It is like a lobotomy. It has in it something of agony, of the inconstancy and disconnection of circuits. You need an infinite stretch of time ahead of you to start to think, infinite energy to make the smallest decision. The world is getting denser. The immense number of useless projects is bewildering. Too many things have to be put in to balance up an uncertain scale. You can't disappear any more. You die in a state of total indecision. A frenzy of indifference in these times of 'speed'. In the same way as you can counter the acceleration of your molecules with an iced drink, you have to head off artificial euphoria by pulling on the brake of melancholy. Science and technologies could have become extensions of our human faculties, as MacLuhan wanted. Instead, they have devoured them. They have become sarcastic, like the laugh of the same name which devours flesh or like the creatures on the banks of the Styx which destroy the substance of the mental faculties.”

ScienceTechnologyInfinityExileUniversalismLocalDeterritorializationMacluhan
Book:Cool memories
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“Literature has chosen the domain of small scale personal relationships, and no longer deals with great metaphysical themes. We no longer have writers like Balzac and Zola, geniuses of human comedy who could explore every domain. Proust also created an inexhaustible world, and Joyce’s Ulysses is still very close to Homer . . . Joyce is the bridge between the two great worlds of classicism and chaos. In the past, philosophy could also claim to be universal. The entire world was open to the thought of a philosopher like Spinoza. Today an immense part of the universe is closed to us.”

PhilosophyLiteratureUniversalismState Of The Art
Author:George Steiner
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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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“But touching her corpse outwardly, they perceived it to be a woman's and, full of astonishment, they praised Christ, who kindleth the fire of His Love in all mankind, men and women, old men and youths and children.”

LoveChristGender EqualityAsceticismUniversalismMankind QuotesBiological Sex
Book:Legends of Eastern Saints Chiefly from Syriac Sources. Volume 1: Archelides; Volume 2: Hilaria. Bound with: Eusebii Pamphilii Historiae Ecclesiasticae Lib X, Ed A Schwegler.
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“Adam Smith's was a real universalism in intent. Laissez Faire was intended to establish a world community as well as a natural harmony of interests within each nation... But the "children of darkness" were able to make good use of his creed. A dogma which was intended to guarantee the economic freedom of the individual became the "ideology" of vast corporate structures of a later period of capitalism, used by them, and still used, to prevent a proper political control of their power.”

WorldWellsChildrenStillsRealUseAblePoliticalUsedPoliticsIndividualNationsInterestCommunityNaturalDarknessEconomyEconomicPeriodsCapitalismHarmonyStructureIdeologyCorporateLiberalismGuaranteesAdamCreedsDogmaLaissez FaireEconomic FreedomUniversalismLaissez Faire Capitalism
Author:Reinhold Niebuhr
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“The most passionate, consistent, extreme and implacable enemy of the Enlightenment and ... all forms of rationalism ... was Johann Georg Hamann. His influence, direct and indirect, upon the romantic revolt against universalism and scientific method ... was considerable and perhaps crucial.”

FormEnemyInfluenceEnlightenmentRomanticDirectMethodPassionateExtremesConsistentCrucialRevoltScientific MethodRationalismIndirectUniversalismDirect And Indirect
Book:Three Critics of the Enlightenment: Vico, Hamann, Herder
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“The alternative of hypothetical universalism, according to which Christ's work is sufficient for all but efficient only for the elect, was alive and well in early Reformed thought. Moreover - and importantly for our purposes - this view was not regarded as an aberration but as a legitimate position that could be taken within the confessional bounds of Reformed thought. But that means that the Five Points aren't the non-negotiable conceptual core of Calvinism after all.”

WellsMeanPurposeChristViewsTakenFiveAlivePositionBoundsCoreAlternativesSufficientEfficientAberrationHypotheticalCalvinismUniversalism
Author:Oliver D. Crisp
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“The way in which these two practices contain each other is that it has always been possible to use the one against the other: to use racism-sexism to prevent universalism from moving too far in the direction of egalitarianism; to use universalism to prevent racism-sexism from moving too far in the direction of a caste system that would inhibit the work force mobility so necessary for the capitalist accumulation process.”

WayTwoUseMovingForceProcessPracticeRacismCapitalismSexismCapitalistAccumulationCastesMobilityEgalitarianismCaste SystemUniversalism
Author:Immanuel Wallerstein
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“Tony [Campolo] and I might disagree on the details, but I think we are both trying to find an alternative to both traditional Universalism and the narrow, exclusivist understanding of hell [that unless you explicitly accept and follow Jesus, you are excluded from eternal life with God and destined for hell].”

ThinkingTryingMightJesusUnderstandingAcceptingHellEternalDetailsTraditionalAlternativesDisagreeDestinedEternal LifeExcludedUniversalism
Author:Brian D. McLaren
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“Real success is found in radical sacrifice. Ultimate satisfaction is found not in making much of ourselves but in making much of God. The purpose of our lives transcends the country and culture in which we live. Meaning is found in community, not individualism; joy is found in generosity, not materialism; and truth is found in Christ, not universalism. Ultimately, Jesus is a reward worth risking everything to know, experience, and enjoy.”

KnowsRealCountryJoyPurposeCultureFoundJesusEnjoyChristCommunityOur LivesSacrificeTruth IsUltimateRewardsSatisfactionRadicalGenerosityMaterialismIndividualismReal SuccessUniversalism
Author:David Platt
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“Scripture starts with the particular and then universalizes it. You are called to love your concrete individual neighbor and then to realize that every individual is your neighbor. The point is not to destroy concrete neighborhood in a fit of universalism but to expand the local neighborhood and embrace the universal neighborhood.”

LoveIndividualRealizingLove YouParticularFitUniversalEmbraceNeighborScriptureLocalsNeighborhoodConcreteUniversalism
Book:The God Who Loves You: Love Divine, All Loves Excelling
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“The EU Constitution is something new in human history. Though it is not as eloquent as the French and U.S. constitutions, it is the first governing document of its kind to expand the human franchise to the level of global consciousness. The language throughout the draft constitution speaks of universalism, making it clear that its focus is not a people, or a territory, or a nation, but rather the human race and the planet we inhabit.”

PeopleFirstsHumansKindCountrySpeakLanguageNationsLevelsRaceConsciousnessClearFocusPlanetsEuropeConstitutionHuman RaceSomething NewTerritoryDocumentsHuman HistoryGoverningEloquentEuropean CountriesUniversalism
Author:Jeremy Rifkin
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