Pluralism Quotes

Ironically, the first thing that appealed to me about Islam was its pluralism. The fact that the Koran praises all the great prophets of the past. (Karen Armstrong)
The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
Our country as a whole, no less than the Hastings College of Law, values tolerance, cooperation, learning, and the amicable resolution of conflicts. But we seek to achieve those goals through "[a] confident pluralism that conduces to civil peace and advances democratic consensus-building," not by abridging First Amendment rights. View quote
Samuel Alito
Pluralism lets things really exist in the each-form or distributively. Monism thinks that the all-form or collective-unit form is the only form that is rational. View quote
William James
I deeply believe in pluralism. I believe in the close proximity of multiple systems or agnostic systems. View quote
Ben Nicholson
Pluralism is no longer simply an asset or a prerequisite for progress and development, it is vital to our existence. View quote
Aga Khan IV
Pluralism is denied logically; inclusivism is denied scripturally, and that leaves us with exclusivism... you have to know that Jesus died and believe in it in order to be saved. View quote
Norman Geisler
The introduction of political pluralism often quickly led to bad results. View quote
Omar Bongo
Libertarians recognize the inevitable pluralism of the modern world and for that reason assert that individual liberty is at least part of the common good. View quote
Tom G. Palmer
Cultural pluralism is as important as political and multi- party pluralism. Religious, linguistic and cultural pluralism are vitally important hallmarks of a true democracy. We are against cultural hegemony of any sort. Diversity is a mark of a healthy democracy. View quote
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
The animating purpose of James was, on the other hand, primarily moral and artistic. It is expressed in his phrase, "block universe," employed as a term of adverse criticism. Mechanism and idealism were abhorrent to him because they both hold to a closed universe in which there is no room for novelty and adventure. Both sacrifice individuality and all the values, moral and aesthetic, which hang upon individuality; for according to absolute idealism, as to mechanistic materialism, the individual is simply a part determined by the whole of which he is a part. Only a philosophy of pluralism, of genuine indetermination, and of change which is real and intrinsic gives significance to individuality. It alone justifies struggle in creative activity and gives opportunity for the emergence of the genuinely new. (John Dewey)
Wallace's error on human intellect arose from the inadequacy of his rigid selectionism, not from a failure to apply it. And his argument repays our study today, since its flaw persists as the weak link in many of the most "modern” evolutionary speculations of our current literature. For Wallace's rigid selectionism is much closer than Darwin's pluralism to the attitude embodied in our favored theory today, which, ironically in this context, goes by the name of "Neo-Darwinism.”. View quote
Stephen Jay Gould
The "interface” of the Renaissance was the meeting of medieval pluralism and modern homogeneity and mechanism – a formula for blitz and metamorphosis. View quote
Marshall McLuhan
I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good. ... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism. View quote
Randall Terry
The encouragement of light-mindedness about traditional philosophical topics serves the same purposes as does the encouragement of light-mindedness about traditional theological topics. Like the rise of large market economies, the increase in literacy, the proliferation of artistic genres, and the insouciant pluralism of contemporary culture, such philosophical superficiality and light-mindedness helps along the disenchantment of the world. It helps make the world's inhabitants more pragmatic, more tolerant, more liberal, more receptive to the appeal of instrumental rationality. View quote
Richard Rorty
But in practice Australia - the pluralism of Australia - sorry the sectarianism to an extent stopped at the time you took your uniform off after coming home from school. View quote
Thomas Keneally
Our democracy is being born in pain. A political culture is emerging - one that presupposes debate and pluralism, but also legal order and, if democracy is to work, strong government authority based on one law for all. This process is gaining strength. View quote
Mikhail Gorbachev
Canada has for many years been a beacon to the rest of the world for its commitment to pluralism and for its support for the multicultural richness and diversity of its peoples. View quote
Aga Khan IV
The true victory is the victory for democracy and pluralism. View quote
Hosni Mubarak
Islam never had its own version of the Reformation and the Enlightenment or a consequent acceptance of pluralism and the separation of church and state. Fortunately there are numerous Muslim leaders who think their faith needs to modernise from the kill-or-be-killed milieu of the Prophet Mohammed. View quote
Tony Abbott
Some professors and especially younger anthropologists have the notion that anthropology is too diverse. The number of things done under the name of anthropology is just infinite; you can do anything and call it anthropology. (That's perhaps a little extreme.) In my field I have always argued for the pluralistic approach to things rather than solidification into some particular line (even my own line) of work. But there is a great deal of anxiety. I think it is true that scholars, both young and old, are overly anxious about pluralism, diversity, conflict-younger ones especially because when they're first getting into a field they want to know what it is they're supposed to know, but older ones, too, because they somehow yearn for a lost paradise when everyone knew what they were doing. (Clifford Geertz)
The Synod Fathers spoke of the importance of respect for religious freedom, viewed as a fundamental human right. [202] This includes "the freedom to choose the religion which one judges to be true and to manifest one's beliefs in public”. [203] A healthy pluralism, one which genuinely respects differences and values them as such, does not entail privatizing religions in an attempt to reduce them to the quiet obscurity of the individual's conscience or to relegate them to the enclosed precincts of churches, synagogues or mosques. This would represent, in effect, a new form of discrimination and authoritarianism. The respect due to the agnostic or non-believing minority should not be arbitrarily imposed in a way that silences the convictions of the believing majority or ignores the wealth of religious traditions. In the long run, this would feed resentment rather than tolerance and peace. View quote
Pope Francis
America is preeminently a country of, if not sexual licenses... a country of sexual tolerance, a country of sexual, I... would settle for pluralism, for now. Well, the Holy Mother Church doesn't settle for that. The Holy Mother Church makes rather strict demands. The Holy Mother Church prohibits, by various edicts,... statutes, and pronouncements, all forms of sex that are not specifically devoted to the outcome of procreating further Catholics, and it enforces this with a celibate hierarchy. Now, that's fine, and it is your choice, and... as Mr. Donohue did say, no one has to join that church, but that church, where it can, does try and impose those standards on non-believers and non-members. And there will always seem, to some people, I think, something absurd in the enforcement of such statutes, especially since we know most Catholics don't observe them, by a celibate oligarchy and hierarchy. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
The realization that American power could and should be used for the defense of pluralism and as a punishment for fascism came to me in Sarajevo a year or two later... That was an early quarrel between me and many of my Nation colleagues, and it was also the first time I found myself in the same trench as people like Paul Wolfowitz and Jeane Kirkpatrick: a shock I had to learn to get over. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
Some have recently argued that pluralism by its very nature demands civic secularism. There seems to be no logical reason why respect for the beliefs of more than a quarter billion Americans, 90 percent of whom declare themselves to be religious, should require us now to eschew the public expression of religion, even in discussing political affairs that have moral foundations or implications. View quote
Francis George