Pluralism Quotes

“The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“In the moral realm, there is very little consensus left in Western countries over the proper basis of moral behavior. And because of the power of the media, for millions of men and women the only venue where moral questions are discussed and weighed is the talk show, where more often than not the primary aim is to entertain, even shock, not to think. When Geraldo and Oprah become the arbiters of public morality, when the opinion of the latest media personality is sought on everything from abortion to transvestites, when banality is mistaken for profundity because [it's] uttered by a movie star or a basketball player, it is not surprising that there is less thought than hype. Oprah shapes more of the nation's grasp of right and wrong than most of the pulpits in the land. Personal and social ethics have been removed from the realms of truth and structures of thoughts; they have not only been relativized, but they have been democratized and trivialized.”
― D.A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism

“It's a curious thing in American life that the most abject nonsense will be excused if the utterer can claim the sanction of religion. A country which forbids an established church by law is prey to any denomination. The best that can be said is that this is pluralism of a kind.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports

“Light and Dark: each was unaware that the other existed.”
― Ashim Shanker, Don't Forget to Breathe

“We believe that religions are basically the same…they only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.”
― Steve Turner, Up to date: Poems, 1968-1982

“At one moment, his eyes sparkled in the light and in the next they were enshrouded in shadow. What connected those bands of light and dark? Could they indeed have been distinct entities?”
― Ashim Shanker, Don't Forget to Breathe

“The construction of civilizational difference is not exclusive in any simple sense. The de-essentialization of Islam is paradigmatic for all thinking about the assimilation of non-European peoples to European civilization. The idea that people's historical experience is inessential to them, that it can be shed at will, makes it possible to argue more strongly for the Enlightenment's claim to universality: Muslims, as members of the abstract category "humans," can be assimilated or (as some recent theorist have put it) "translated" into a global ("European") civilization once they have divested themselves of what many of them regard (mistakenly) as essential to themselves. The belief that human beings can be separated from their histories and traditions makes it possible to urge a Europeanization of the Islamic world. And by the same logic, it underlies the belief that the assimilation to Europe's civilization of Muslim immigrants who are--for good or for ill--already in European states is necessary and desirable.
”
― Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity

“Whatever we may think of the merits of torturing children for pleasure, and no doubt there is much to be said on both sides, I am sure we all agree that it should be done with sterilized instruments.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“This is pluralism: not a synonym of relativism, but rather an antonym. Pluralism accepts the moral reality of different kinds of truth, but rejects the idea that they can all be placed on a single scale, measured by a single value.”
― Timothy Snyder, Thinking the Twentieth Century

“The construction of civilizational difference is not exclusive in any simple sense. The de-essentialization of Islam is paradigmatic for all thinking about the assimilation of non-European poeples to European civilization. The idea that people's historical experience is inessential to them, that it can be shed at will, makes it possible to argue more strongly for the Enlightenment's claim to universality: Muslims, as members of the abstract category "humans," can be assimilated or (as some recent theorist have put it) "translated" into a global ("European") civilization once they have divested themselves of what many of them regard (mistakenly) as essential to themselves. The belief that human beings can be separated from their histories and traditions makes it possible to urge a Europeanization of the Islamic world. And by the same logic, it underlies the belief that the assimilation to Europe's civilization of Muslim immigrants who are--for good or for ill--already in European states is necessary and desirable.”
― Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity

“Nothing—not even the US Army—more threatens the future of a democratic, pluralistic and (dare we wish, secular) Iraq than the political ascendancy of Islamic fascists like Al Sadr.”
― Marc Cooper

“The question is not whether Indian Muslims belong to India—the question is whether India, as a democracy, has the courage to honour its own founding principles.”
― Adeel Ahmed Khan

“Do there exist many worlds, or is there but a single world? This is one of the most noble and exalted questions in the study of Nature”
― Albertus Magnus

“When my voice and your voice combine, the soil beneath becomes a shrine.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“Give up the filthy habit of associating philosophy with the greeks, and poetry with the english - education that doesn't reflect plural humanity, raises only goodlooking jungle rubbish.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“We need special instruments to see the full spectrum of electromagnetic waves, but to feel the full spectrum of humanity a heart freed from supremacy is sufficient.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“Education that doesn’t reflect plural humanity, raises only goodlooking jungle rubbish.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Kral Fakir: When Calls The Kainat

“Pilgrimage to Plurality (Sonnet 2499)

Forget the canon, you can't even make sense
of my titles, bleating like nationalist livestock,
and chanting like brainless bacon - you have to
have a certain amount of multicultural tendency,
which in a way, is your first test of pilgrimage,
moreover, it's the key to the Naskar Canon.

If you have no desire to step outside your culture,
there's no point in grabbing any of my text,
you might as well pick up a chinese or arab text,
and expect to be an expert while speaking only English.

My script may be English, my language is not -
remove your assumptions, transcend your disciplines;
it is only through pilgrimage to plurality,
that an ape ascends into humanity.

My goal is not to replace
white supremacy with colored supremacy,
or christian supremacy with muslim supremacy,
or blind faith with dispassionate logic,
I am a stateless weaver of human plurality.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“The Uncultured Idiot (Sonnet 2501-2502)

My roots run deep down to the core of earth,
spread across the bones and marrow of the human race.

Starting out with an insatiable spark of expansion,
I spent my early teens devouring scriptures,
then my late teens and early twenties I spent
assimilating neuroscience and psychology,

but it wasn't until my late twenties,
a few years after my first publication,
that the original Naskarian voice started
to awaken, a voice not only beyond nation,
religion and culture, but also beyond
eurocentric intellectual convention.

So many things were unfolding in my mind
at once, that it's impossible for me to
piece together a coherent timeline of events.

But one thing was most striking, it's that,
influence of the puny eurocentric schools of thought
was beginning to wear off, as cultures of the world
found an ideal vessel with zero chains of tribalism.

I became empty and let the world pour its wonders
into me, so it did, and I burn day in, day out, and
each time from the ashes a new pluralist text is born,
blasting all archaic, elitist and exclusivist narrative.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hazrat-e Humanity: The Uncultured Polyglot

“One culture doesn't fit all,
one morality doesn't fit all,
one faith doesn't fit all,
one reason doesn't fit all.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Your dictionaries are too small for my voice, your disciplines are too primitive for my existence - not with intellect, not with faith - to read me you have to think plurally and feel planetary.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Not with intellect, not with faith - to read me you have to think plurally and feel planetary.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“To read me you have to think plurally and feel planetary.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Your dictionaries are too small for my voice, your disciplines are too primitive for my existence.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Pluralism is not a polite idealism, pluralism is civilizational emergency.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“Pluralism is Civilizational Emergency
(Sonnet 2609-2610)

Mainstream earth history, which is systematically
bloated with euro philosophy, euro theology,
euro morality, is corrupted to the bone,
all propagated as carrier of truth, while in fact,
europe is the cradle of lies and cruelty -

the human race comes from Africa,
but inhumanity originated in Europe.

Indigenous people wear animal skin as clothes,
it's called uncivilized,
privileged people wear the same skin,
expensively processed in chemicals,
and it's called fashion.

Arabic is one of the rarest
soulful languages spoken by the human race,
yet in the hands of eurocentric propaganda
apes are conditioned like pavlov's dogs
into believing it to be the most sinister.

Europe did give us pragmatism,
which has its place but only as a toddler
among the constellations of civilizations -

empathy originated in Mother Africa,
naturalism originated in Latin America,
divine love originated in Arabia,
equilibrium originated in China,
integration originated in India.

Pluralism is not a polite idealism,
pluralism is civilizational emergency.
Divided we are space-racing monkeys,
integrated we are Upright Humanity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“Empathy originated in Mother Africa,
naturalism originated in Latin America,
divine love originated in Arabia,
equilibrium originated in China,
integration originated in India.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“Empathy originated in Mother Africa, naturalism originated in Latin America, divine love originated in Arabia, equilibrium originated in China, integration originated in India. Pluralism is not a polite idealism, pluralism is civilizational emergency.”
― Abhijit Naskar, With Love From A Blue Rock

“Human beings evolved to live in small bands with people more or less like themselves. But today, many of us live in wonderfully pluralistic societies. In America, Europe, India, and many other places, we're trying to build mass multicultural democracies, societies that contain people from diverse races and ethnicities, with different ideologies and backgrounds. To survive, pluralistic societies require citizens who can look across difference and show the kind of understanding that is a prerequisite of trust—who can say, at the very least, “I’m beginning to see you. Certainly, I will never fully experience the world as you experience it, but I’m beginning, a bit, to see the world through your eyes.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

“Our social skills are currently inadequate to the pluralistic societies we are living in. In my job as a journalist, I often find myself interviewing people who tell me they feel invisible and disrespected: Black people feeling that the systemic inequities that affect their daily experiences are not understood by whites, rural people feeling they are not seen by coastal elites, people across political divides staring at each other with angry incomprehension, depressed young people feeling misunderstood by their parents and everyone else, privileged people blithely unaware of all the people around them cleaning their houses and serving their needs, husbands and wives in broken marriages who realize that the person who should know them best actually has no clue. Many of our big national problems arise from the fraying of our social fabric. If we want to begin repairing the big national ruptures, we have to learn to do the small things well.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen