The universal human laws - need, love for the beloved, fear, hunger, periodic exaltation, the kindness that rises up naturally in the absence of hunger/fear/pain - are constant, predictable, reliable, universal, and are merely ornamented with the details of local culture.
George SaundersRelated topics
absence constant fear human hunger kindness need pain reliable universal LawsRelated quotes
Let all partake of the feast of faith. Let all receive the riches of goodness. Let no one lament their poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed. Let no one mourn their transgressions, for pardon has dawned from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Saviour's death has set us free.
John Chrysostom
Since we only consider the universe on a very large scale, and make abstraction of all details and local irregularities, our universe must be homogeneous and isotropic. It follows... that the three-dimensional space of it must be what mathematicians call a space of constant curvature.
Willem de Sitter
When I speak of artistic universals, I am not denying the enormous role played by culture. Obviously culture plays a tremendous role, otherwise you wouldn't have different artistic styles - but it doesn't follow that art is completely idiosyncratic and arbitrary, either, or that there are no universal laws.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
Our culture has a universal myth in which we see emotion as more complex and obscure than intellect. Indeed, emotion might be "deeper" in some sense of prior evolution, but this need not make it harder to understand; in fact, I think today we actually know much more about emotion than about reason.
Marvin Minsky