A Quote by Herbert Marcuse

The criterion for free choice can never be an absolute one, but neither is it entirely relative.

Herbert Marcuse

Quote Topics

Absolute Choice Entirely Free Free Choice Neither Never Relative

Quote Author

Herbert Marcuse
German - Philosopher
July 19, 1898 - July 29, 1979

Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute.

Flannery O'Connor

There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies. Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the center of things.

Giordano Bruno

I am neither man nor angel. I have no sex nor limit. I am knowledge itself. I am He. I have neither anger nor hatred. I have neither pain nor pleasure. Death or birth I never had. For I am Knowledge Absolute, and Bliss Absolute. I am He, my soul, I am He!

Swami Vivekananda

Writing might be unalloyed joy, were it not for the fact that power is always shadowed by responsibility. Thankfully, the absolute power that writers have is not weighted down with absolute responsibility. It can neither be suppressed nor diminished, except by choice.

Brian Stableford

You can't relate to an absolute or it wouldn't be absolute, it would be relative. On an intellectual level, that's easy. However, you hear theologians in the theistic traditions talk about absolute God, and I saw God, or God spoke; speaking, being seen, these are all relational things. So what is absolute about such a being, wouldn't actually be absolute.

Robert Thurman

Allah is in Himself the non-being and the being, the inexistent and the existent. He is at the same time that which we designate by absolute non-being and by absolute being; or by relative non-being and relative being. . . . All these designation come back to God alone, for there is nothing which we can perceive, know, write or say which is not Him.

Abdelkader El Djezairi

We used to have just one criterion and that was profit, and then another criterion was added - social welfare. Now we have to add the third important criterion, and that is nature and the environment.

Mikhail Gorbachev

To say a poem is absolute is saying nothing, because an ink blot can be absolute. Yet you put into it what you like. So it becomes totally relative.

Nicholas Mosley

When the psychiatrist approves of a person's actions, he judges that person to have acted with "free choice"; when he disapproves,he judges him to have acted without "free choice." It is small wonder that people find "free choice" a confusing idea: "free choice" appears to refer to what the person being judged (often called the "patient") does, whereas it is actually what the person making the judgment (often a psychiatrist or other mental health worker) thinks.

Thomas Szasz

As much as we have free choice, absolute destiny is immutable. What is meant to happen does, through one measure or another.

J.R. Ward

I am unpersuaded that relative poverty and hard work are greater adversities than relative affluence and free time.

Dallin H. Oaks

Events are never absolute, their outcome depends entirely upon the individual.

Honore de Balzac

The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Truth indeed is sacred; but, as Pilate said, "What is truth?" Show us the undoubted infallible criterion of absolute truth, and we will hold it as a sacred inviolable thing. But in the absence of that infallible criterion, we have all an equal right to grope about in our search of it, and no body and no school nor clique must be allowed to set up a standard of orthodoxy which shall bar the freedom of scientific inquiry.

William Stanley Jevons

Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.