A Quote by Flannery O'Connor

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

Quote Topics

Absolute Always Cannot Level Merely Raising Relative Remain Those Values

Quote Author

Flannery O'Connor
American - Novelist
March 25, 1925 - August 3, 1964

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

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

People are, by and large, quite poor at judging correct absolute values but are astute about determining relative values. Psychologists call this coherent arbitrariness, which suggests that individuals are coherent when they compare prices on a relative basis but arbitrary when those prices are considered versus fundamental value.

Michael Mauboussin

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

If there is no absolute moral standard, then one cannot say in a final sense that anything is right or wrong. By absolute we mean that which always applies, that which provides a final or ultimate standard. There must be an absolute if there are to be morals, and there must be an absolute if there are to be real values. If there is no absolute beyond man's ideas, then there is no final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions.

Francis Schaeffer

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

We cannot rest and sit down lest we rust and decay. Health is maintained only through work. And as it is with all life so it is with science. We are always struggling from the relative to the absolute.

Max Planck

A modern theory of knowledge which takes account of the relational as distinct from the merely relative character of all historical knowledge must start with the assumption that there are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to conceive of absolute truth existing independently of the values and position of the subject and unrelated to the social context.

Karl Mannheim

It is not given to man to know the whole Truth. His duty lies in living up to the truth as he sees it, and in doing so, to resort to the purest means, i.e., to non-violence. God alone knows absolute truth. Therefore, I have often said, Truth is God. It follows that man, a finite being, cannot know absolute truth. Nobody in this world possesses absolute truth. This is God's attribute alone. Relative truth is all we know. Therefore, we can only follow the truth as we see it. Such pursuit of truth cannot lead anyone astray.

Mahatma Gandhi

In a certain way, we're always toggling back and forth between the absolute and the relative, if that makes sense.

George Saunders

When you put relative and absolute truth together and they become one unit, it becomes possible to make things workable. You are not too much on the side of absolute truth, or you would become too theoretical. You are not too much on the side of relative truth, or you would become too precise. When you put them together, you realize that there is no problem.

Chogyam Trungpa

Absolute space, in its own nature, without regard to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. Relative space is some movable dimension or measure of the absolute spaces, which our senses determine by its position to bodies, and which is vulgarly taken for immovable space.

Isaac Newton

Everything is relative; and only that is absolute.

Auguste Comte

Everything is relative except relatives, and they are absolute.

Alfred Stieglitz

Mathematics is the most exact science, and its conclusions are capable of absolute proof. But this is so only because mathematics does not attempt to draw absolute conclusions. All mathematical truths are relative, conditional. In E. T. Bell Men of Mathematics, New York: Simona and Schuster, 1937.