Universality Quotes:

Universality has been severely reduced: it is virtually dead as a concept in most areas of public policy.

- Stephen Harper

source: Stephen Harper's Speech to the National Citizens Coalition's Colin Brown Memorial Dinner, 1994.

topic: Policy, Areas, Universality, Public Policy

Everything must be sacrificed, if necessary, for that one sentiment: universality.

- Swami Vivekananda

source: Swami Vivekananda (1963). “Complete Works”

topic: Sentiments, Universality, Ifs

One principle is the universality of freedom. I'm a freedom lover.

- George W. Bush

source: Source: www.aarp.org

topic: Principles, Lovers, Universality

I want to live out principles that became a part of my life in my 40s, 50s, and 60s. One principle is the universality of freedom.

- George W. Bush

source: Source: www.aarp.org

topic: Principles, Want, Universality

That idea of URL was the basic clue to the universality of the Web. That was the only thing I insisted upon.

- Tim Berners-Lee

topic: Ideas, Clue, Universality

Everybody underestimated the universality of the concept of a nightmare or a bad dream.

- Robert Englund

source: Source: www.avclub.com

topic: Dream, Nightmare, Universality, Bad Dream

Poetry being the sign of that which all men desire, even though the desire be unconscious, intensity of life or completeness of experience, the universality of its appeal is a matter of course.

- John Drinkwater

source: John Drinkwater (1922). “The Lyric: An Essay”, p.35, Library of Alexandria

topic: Men, Desire, Matter, Completeness, Universality

For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of battle. It has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty.

- John Cheever

topic: Grief, Rain, Writing, Universality

Music is the universal language of mankind.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

topic: Music, Teacher, Appreciation, Music Life, Music Is Life

An emancipated society, on the other hand, would not be a unitary state, but the realization of universality in the reconciliation of differences.

- Theodor Adorno

source: Theodor Adorno, Richard Leppert, Susan H. Gillespie (2002). “Essays on Music”, p.79, Univ of California Press

topic: Hands, Differences, Culture, Universality

The notion of a universality of human experience is a confidence trick and the notion of a universality of female experience is a clever confidence trick.

- Angela Carter

topic: Clever, Female, Tricks, Universality

True universality does not consist in knowing much but in loving much.

- Jacob Burckhardt

topic: Love, Knowing, Doe, Universality

If form follows function, as we know it does in this Universe, then consciousness will adapt to whatever form it requires in order to function. Hopefully, it will also develop its fundamental function; what that is may be debatable within many schools of thought, but it is indisputable that evolved thinking recognizes the universality of Life.

- Vanna Bonta

topic: School, Thinking, Order, Universality

Individuality in universality is the plan of creation. Each cell has its part in bringing about consciousness. Man is individual and at the same time universal. It is while realising our individual nature that we realise even our national and universal nature. Each is an infinite circle whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere. By practice one can feel universal Selfhood which is the essence of Hinduism. He who sees in every being his own Self is a Pandita (sage).

- Swami Vivekananda

topic: Men, Practice, Circles, Universality

When a man has displayed talent in some particular path, and left all competitors behind him in it, the world are too apt to give him credit for universality of genius, and to anticipate for him success in all that he undertakes.

- Charles Caleb Colton

source: Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.181

topic: Men, Giving, Genius, Universality

I believe in the universality of freedom and therefore want to be involved in the freedom movement.

- George W. Bush

source: Source: www.texasmonthly.com

topic: Believe, Movement, Want, Universality

The Iraqis needed to know that we weren't going to leave them alone. No matter how difficult it was, the United States would help them realize the universal desire to be free. Now of course, if you didn't believe in the universality of freedom, then of course, you wouldn't act. I care how they live and I believe a free Iraq will be transformative.

- George W. Bush

source: Source: www.texasmonthly.com

topic: Believe, Iraq, Desire, Universality

Perhaps patriarchy's greatest psychological weapon is simply its universality and longevity. ... Patriarchy has a still more tenacious or powerful hold through its successful habit of passing itself off as nature.

- Kate Millett

source: Sexual Politics ch. 2 (1970)

topic: Powerful, Successful, Weapons, Patriarchy, Tenacious

Consciousness shakes off the littleness of being and finds the infinite space in which all things have a place. Be in your universality.

- Mooji

topic: Space, Consciousness, Infinite, Infinite Space, Universality

If you reject the infinite, you are stuck with the finite, and the finite is parochial... the best explanation of anything eventually involves universality, and therefore infinity. The reach of explanations cannot be limited by fiat.

- David Deutsch

topic: Infinity, Infinite, Stuck, Universality

The novels have done so well because the drawings are abstract, black-and-white. This adds to the universality of the story. "Persepolis" also has dreamlike moments, and the drawings help maintain cohesion and consistency.

- Marjane Satrapi

source: Source: www.indiewire.com

topic: Black And White, Drawing, Consistency, Persepolis, Cohesion

I love the universality of music and how it can viscerally connect people from culture to culture, regardless of anything. It kind of levels everything out and connects us. That universal sound thing is a big deal to me.

- Alanis Morissette

source: Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com. May 25, 2013.

topic: People, Culture, Levels, Universality

Reinvention means you're kind of re-creating somebody. Well, I'm the same person, in terms of values. My priorities - my faith, my family, my friends, the values of personal responsibility and universality of freedom, and "to whom much is given, much is required" - haven't changed [since presidency].

- George W. Bush

source: Source: www.aarp.org

topic: Mean, Responsibility, Creating, Personal Responsibility, Reinvention

There are certain aspects, and there are - there are 15 attributes of winners and winning slogans. "Which side are you on" sounds divisive, that you're on one side or the other, at a time when we actually want universality. We want unanimity.

- Frank Luntz

source: "Frank Luntz: How To 'Win' With Smart Messaging". Interview with Neal Conan, www-s4.npr.org. March 8, 2011.

topic: Winning, Sound, Want, Unanimity, Universality

I've often had the fortune to work on projects with a small theme I find very interesting enough to pursue and to be passionate about in the context of the story, then it may turn out there's a universality about my character which still resonates with many people as well.

- Chiwetel Ejiofor

source: Source: aalbc.com

topic: Character, People, Interesting, Universality

The freedom movement is built around the principle of democracy and universality of freedom.

- George W. Bush

source: Source: www.texasmonthly.com

topic: Democracy, Movement, Principles, Universality

I never give too much thought to the idea of universality.

- Rirkrit Tiravanija

source: Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

topic: Ideas, Giving, Too Much, Universality

Even the absolute universality of the law of causality does not necessarily limit a person's freedom, because the law of causality not only enables him to explain the past and predict the future, but also encourages him to use his intelligence to create new causes and attain new results.

- Hu Shih

topic: Past, Law, Doe, Universality

It was never the people who complained of the universality of human rights, nor did the people consider human rights as a Western or Northern imposition. It was often their leaders who did so.

- Vaclav Havel

topic: Rights, People, Leader, Universality

We live in a world where great incompatibles co-exist: the human scale and the superhuman scale, stability and mobility, permanence and change, identity and anonymity, comprehensibility and universality.

- Kenzo Tange

topic: Identity, Mobility, World, Universality

The universality of salvation means that it is granted not only to those who explicitly believe in Christ and have entered the Church. Since salvation is offered to all, it must be made concretely available to all.

- Pope John Paul II

topic: Believe, Mean, Church, Universality

Yet is it possible in terms of the motion of atoms to explain how men can invent an electric motor, or design and build a great cathedral? If such achievements represent anything more than the requirements of physical law, it means that science must investigate the additional controlling factors, whatever they may be, in order that the world of nature may be adequately understood. For a science which describes only the motions of inanimate things but fails to include the actions of living organisms cannot claim universality.

- Arthur Compton

source: "The Human Meaning of Science".

topic: Mean, Men, Order, Electric Motors, Universality

The ethic of Reverence for Life is the ethic of Love widened into universality.

- Albert Schweitzer

source: Albert Schweitzer (2014). “Out of My Life and Thought: An Autobiography”, p.237, Henry Holt and Company

topic: Life, Ethics, Reverence, Prompts, Recompense

[The aim of science is] to explain what so far has taken to be an explicans, such as a law of nature. The task of empirical science constantly renews itself. We may go on forever, proceeding to explanations of a higher and higher universality.

- Karl Popper

topic: Taken, Science, Law, Universality

The framework of the artist's ideas is clearly only that which he is forever seeking for universality, and must be far wider than the framework of the ideals of the patriot.

- Sean O Faolain

topic: Writing, Artist, Ideas, Universality

The universality of Islam is not uniformity, it is unity with diversity.

- Tariq Ramadan

topic: Diversity, Unity, Islam, Universality

The psychological consequences of this spread of white culture have been out of all proportion to the materialistic. This world-wide cultural diffusion has protected us as man had never been protected before from having to take seriously the civilizations of other peoples; it has given to our culture a massive universality that we have long ceased to account for historically, and which we read off rather as necessary and inevitable.

- Ruth Benedict

topic: Men, Civilization, White, Diffusion, Universality

I believe that one of the most sound ideas in dramatic writing is that in order to create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific. Universality, I think, emerges from truthful identity of what is.

- Lorraine Hansberry

topic: Believe, Writing, Thinking, Dramatic Writing, Universality

Plain experience and common sense inform us that no abstract Person can have made us as we are without also wishing to delete us and start over (Gen. 8:21; Zeph. 1:2). Therefore, the existence of cruel and arbitrary nature, together with the universality of human sin, prevents us from beginning the theological enterprise with any concept of God that is distinct from revelation. All theologies of a cosmic harmonic principle shipwreck on the truths of tragedy, catastrophe, and injustice.

- Paul F. M. Zahl

topic: Common Sense, Starting Over, Tragedy, Universality

The properties of executability and universality associated with programming languages can be combined, in a single language, with the well-known properties of mathematical notation which make it such an effective tool of thought.

- Kenneth E. Iverson

source: "Notation as a Tool of Thought". Cvommunications of the ACM, 23 (8), (pp. 444 - 465), August 1980.

topic: Tools, Language, Well Known, Universality

The only ‘realistic’ prospect is to ground a new political universality by opting for the impossible, fully assuming the place of the exception, with no taboos, no a priori norms (‘human rights,’ ‘democracy’), respect for which would prevent us from ‘resignifying’ terror, the ruthless exercise of power, the spirit of sacrifice … if this radical choice is decried by some bleeding-heart liberals as Linksfaschismus, so be it!

- Slavoj Žižek

topic: Heart, Exercise, Sacrifice, Bleeding Heart, Universality

no such individual would find the Golden Rule surprising in any way because at its base lies the foundation of most human interactions and exchanges and it can be found in countless texts throughout recorded history and from around the world--a testimony to its universality.

- Michael Shermer

topic: Lying, World, Golden, Universality

Painting, because of its universality, becomes speculation.

- El Greco

topic: Painting, Speculation, Universality

It is the great beauty of true religion that it shall be universal, and a departure in any instance from universality is a corruption of religion itself.

- Joseph Glanvill

topic: Religion, Departure, Corruption, Universality

I read the story and reread the story, but I still could not find the universality that the little Irishman had spoken of. All I saw in the story was some Irishmen meeting in a room and talking politics. What had that to do with America, especially with my people? It was not until years later that I saw what he meant ... I began to listen, to listen closely to how they talked about their heroes, to how they talked about the dead and how great the dead had once been. I heard it everywhere.

- Ulysses S. Grant

topic: Hero, Talking, Years, Irishmen, Talking Politics

Without undervaluing any other human agency, it may be safely affirmed that the Common School, improved and energized, as it can easily be, may become the most effective and benignant of all the forces of civilization. Two reasons sustain this position. In the first place, there is a universality in its operation, which can be affirmed of no other institution whatever... And, in the second place, the materials upon which it operates are so pliant and ductile as to be susceptible of assuming a greater variety of forms than any other earthly work of the Creator.

- Horace Mann

topic: School, Civilization, Two, Universality

The - the sort of thing that I want to do is to strike a resonant chord of universality in other people, which is best done by fiction.

- Joyce Carol Oates

source: "Author Joyce Carol Oates on Widowhood’s ‘World of Absurdity’". Interview with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. February 3, 2011.

topic: People, Fiction, Done, Universality

To write with taste, in the highest sense, is to write [...] so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs; to write [...] so that people understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain, and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged to live on. If there is good to be said, the writer should say it. If there is bad to be said, he should say it in a way that reflects the truth that, though we see the evil, we choose to continue among the living. The true artist [...] gets his sense of worth and honor from his conviction that art is powerful--

- John Gardner

topic: Suicide, Art, Pain, Universality

However, as words become particularized, and as men begin - in however small a way - to use them in personal, arbitrary ways, so their transformation into art begins. It was words of this kind that, descending on me like a swarm of winged insects, seized on my individuality and sought to shut me up within it. Nevertheless, despite the enemy's depredations upon my person, I turned their universality - at once a weapon and a weakness - back on them, and to some extent succeeded in using words to universalize to my own individuality.

- Yukio Mishima

topic: Art, Men, Individuality, Using Words, Universality