Pluralism Quotes

We have collected and put the best pluralism quotes in the following categories. Enjoy reading these insights and feel free to share this page on your social media to inspire others.

May these pluralism quotes on many subjects inspire you to never give up and keep working towards your goals. Who knows—success could be just around the corner.

Pluralism is the affirmation and acceptance of diversity. The term is used, often in different ways, in the contexts of a wide range of issues of culture, religion and philosophy. In politics, the affirmation of diversity in the interests and beliefs of the citizenry, and the rights of minorities, is one of the most important features of modern democracy. In science, it involves acceptance that many methods, theories or points of view are legitimate or plausible.

See also: Pluralism in Philosophy, Religious Pluralism, and Jewish Views On Religious Pluralism

“Who are we to say what is right and what is wrong?” is the common refrain under the doctrine of pure pluralism. Clearly, society cannot long survive if this principle is pushed to its logical conclusion and everyone is free to write his own laws.- Benjamin Hart

Pluralism and tolerance are pillars of modern society. That has to be accepted. But pluralism doesn’t just mean diversity. It means that we share the same rules and values, and are still nevertheless different. Islam doesn’t have this idea. And Islam also has no tradition of tolerance. – Bassam Tibi

Pluralism implies religious tolerance, not unchecked religious freedom. – Reza Aslan

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. – Norman Geisler

Pluralism is no longer simply an asset or a prerequisite for progress and development, it is vital to our existence. – Aga Khan IV

Pluralism isn’t just diversity; it’s something we create out of this diversity. – Diana L. Eck

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. – William James

Pluralism matters because life is not worth living without new experiences – new people, new places, new challenges. But discipline matters too; we cannot simply treat life as a psychedelic trip through a series of novel sensations. – Tim Harford

A love of neighbor manifests itself in the tolerance not only of opinions of others but, what is more important, of the essence and uniqueness of others, when we subscribe to that religious philosophy of life that insists that God has made each man and woman an individual sacred personality endowed with a specific temperament, created with differing needs, hungers, dreams. This is a variegated, pluralistic world where no two stars are the same and every snowflake has its own distinctive pattern. God apparently did not want a regimented world of sameness. That is why creation is so manifold. So it is with us human beings. Some are born dynamic and restless; others placid and contemplative…One man’s temperament is full throated with laughter; another’s tinkles with the sad chimes of gentle melancholy. Our physiques are different, and that simple difference oftentimes drives us into conflicting fulfillment of our natures, to action or to thought, to passion or to denial, to conquest or to submission. There is here no fatalism of endowment. We can change and prune and shape the hedges of our being, but we must rebel against the sharp shears being wielded by other hands, cutting off the living branches of our spirits in order to make our personalities adornments for their dwellings. – Joshua Loth Liebman

A social entrepreneur is somebody who knows how to make an idea reality, and one of the great ideas of our time is pluralism. Can people from different backgrounds live together in mutual peace and loyalty? And what we need is a generation of young social entrepreneurs who know how to make that great idea reality in an historical moment where religious extremists are, frankly, making their idea reality. – Eboo Patel

A society based on Christian principles provides for pluralism, but with enough restrictions to prevent civilization from degenerating into chaos. – Benjamin Hart

After the Christian majority takes control, pluralism will be seen as immoral and evil and the state will not permit anybody to practice it. – Pat Robertson

All are free to believe or not believe; all are free to practice a faith or not. But those who believe must be free to speak of and act on their belief. – Jeff Miller

America treasures the relationship we have with our many Muslim friends, and we respect the vibrant faith of Islam which inspires countless individuals to lead lives of honesty, integrity, and morality. This year, may Eid also be a time in which we recognize the values of progress, pluralism, and acceptance that bind us together as a Nation and a global community. By working together to advance mutual understanding, we point the way to a brighter future for all. – George W. Bush

America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance — it is not. It is suffering from tolerance. Tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded. – Fulton J. Sheen

Americans have always believed that-within the law-all kinds of people should be allowed to take the initiative in all kinds of activities. And out of that pluralism has come virtually all of our creativity. Freedom is real only to the extent that there are diverse alternatives. – John W. Gardner

Another way to describe the dilemma for religious faith is that pluralism creates social conditions in which God is no longer an inevitability. While it is possible to believe in God, one has to work much harder at it because the framework of belief is no longer present to sustain it. The presumption of God and of his active presence in the world cannot be easily sustained because the most important symbols of social, economic, political, and aesthetic life no longer point to him. God is simply less obvious than he once was, and for most no longer obvious at all – quite the opposite. – James Davison Hunter

And he [Louis Brandeis] talks to his young acolyte, Horace Kallen, who wrote this beautiful book called Cultural Pluralism, and he comes to believe that by being better Jews, or better members of our ethnic group, we can be better Americans, because America is like an orchestra in which identity is defined by the diversity of perspectives that we bring to the table. – Jeffrey Rosen

At least for a moment we all saw, I think, that the danger of pluralism is that it becomes factionalism, and that if factions grind their separate axes too vociferously, something mutual, precious, and human is in danger of being drowned out and lost. – Frederick Buechner

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

But a society in which pluralism is not undergirded by some shared values and held together by some measure of mutual trust simply cannot survive. Pluralism that reflects no commitments whatever to the common good is pluralism gone berserk… ..Leaders unwilling to seek mutually workable arrangements within systems to their own are not surviving the long-term interest of their constituents – John W. Gardner

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. – Thomas Keneally

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. – Aga Khan IV

Church and state are, and must remain, separate. – Ronald Reagan

Cultural pluralism is the only thing we all have in common. – Tom Heehler

Do you know that those who preach pluralism and human rights,
cannot give those rights to the Din of Islam?
Those who preach democracy throughout the globe cannot give it to the Palestinians –
lest Israel should cry! – M. Kamal Hassan, Salam Kasih

Evangelicals have squandered their cultural capital because they have tried to reclaim a standing in American culture that they never had. The American Founding was a mix of fragmented religious (and not-so-religious) voices. – Joseph LaConte

For alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga- a belief that we’re all connected as one people. If there’s a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me- even if it’s not my child. If there’s a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription drugs and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer- even if it’s not my grandparent. If there’s an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that that threatens my civil liberties. It is that fundamental belief- I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper- that makes this country work. – Barack Obama

For pluralism, all that we are required to admit as the constitution of reality is what we ourselves find empirically realized in every minimum of finite life. Briefly it is this, that nothing real is absolutely simple, that every smallest bit of experience is a multum in parvo plurally related, that each relation is one aspect, character, or function, way of its being taken, or way of its taking something else. – William James

For reasons that will never be entirely clear, God has a soft spot for religious strangers, both as agents of divine blessing and recipients of divine grace – to the point that God sometimes chooses one of them over people who believe they should by all rights come first. This is a great mystery, but it does nothing to obscure the great commandment. In every circumstance, regardless of the outcome, the main thing Jesus has asked me to do is love God and my neighbor as religiously as I love myself. The minute I have that handled, I will ask for my next assignment. For now, my hands are full. – Barbara Brown Taylor

For [Louis] Brandeis, you know, ethnicity and background are much less important than facts and reason. And he believes that far from wanting to efface our diversity of perspectives, we have to embrace it because that makes us more American, not less. In that sense, he’s incredibly modern in an age of cultural pluralism. And it is disappointing for just the reasons you say that not everyone has embraced his pluralistic vision. – Jeffrey Rosen

From the Muslims I learned from the extraordinary pluralism of the Koran, the fact that the Koran endorses every single one of the major world faiths, but I was particularly enthralled by the Sufi tradition, the mystical tradition of Islam, which is so open to other religious faiths. – Karen Armstrong

I am happy that Poland is returning to the road of pluralism and democracy. – Lech Walesa

I deeply believe in pluralism. I believe in the close proximity of multiple systems or agnostic systems. – Ben Nicholson

I do think that the U.S. has an opportunity as a democracy to really exemplify what a religiously diverse society can be when it embraces the pluralism. – Diana L. Eck

I just think in this world of extreme religious pluralism, the great spectrum of things ranging from the healthy and the respectable, and the balance and the true and tried, you go down to quite bizarre things which are very risky for people, particularly people who are young or vulnerable or unable to discriminate. – Peter Hollingworth

I like the pluralism of modernity; it doesn’t threaten me or my faith. And if one’s faith is dependent on being reinforced in every aspect of other people’s lives, then it is a rather insecure faith, don’t you think? – Andrew Sullivan

I often have discussions with people who demand pluralism and much more. One can discuss these issues, but only within the framework of the law. – Nguyen Minh Triet

I think that young people are going to continue on with the work on pluralism for two reasons, really. One is because it’s the reality of the world that they live in, and I think young people from different backgrounds are asking themselves, what does it mean for me to be a Buddhist and friends with a Baptist? – Eboo Patel

I thought about the meaning of pluralism in a world where the forces that seek to divide us are strong. I came to one conclusion: We have to save each other. It’s the only way to save ourselves. – Eboo Patel

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. – Randall Terry

I’m asking Muslims in the West a very basic question: Will we remain spiritually infantile, caving to cultural pressures to clam up and conform, or will we mature into full-fledged citizens, defending the very pluralism that allows us to be in this part of the world in the first place? My question for non-Muslims is equally basic: Will you succumb to the intimidation of being called “racists,” or will you finally challenge us Muslims to take responsibility for our role in what ails Islam? – Irshad Manji

If adapted to the unique requirements of various regions and peoples of the world, such economic pluralism could have a greater global impact over the next fifty years than the collectivist economics of Marxism and neo-Marxism have had during the half century just past. – Robert Dickson Crane

if you know whether a man is a decided monist or a decided pluralist, you perhaps know more about the rest of his opinions than if you give him any other name ending in IST. To believe in the one or in the many, that is the classification with the maximum number of consequences. – Will James

In sum, then, despite the formal legal and institutional infrastructure, ‘postwar democracy’ as defined and practiced by Japanese citizens and exemplified by responses to Minamata disease incident has remained quite ad hoc: it is creative, exciting, and full of tools for citizens to use but always dependent on continual definition and redefinition in practice. Minamata has left a legacy not of regularized procedures and institutions for expanded pluralism but of possibilities.— George on the limitations and future of democratizing Japan. p. 286.

In the culture of pluralism…the only thing that cannot be tolerated is a claim to exclusivity. – C. Sproul

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

In the realm of culture, the new totalitarianism manifests itself precisely in a harmonizing pluralism, where the most contradictory works and truths peacefully coexist in indifference. – Herbert Marcuse

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

It is ironic that anyone who appeals to religious values today runs the risk of being called ‘divisive’ or attacked as an enemy of pluralism. – William Bennett

It is not a Buddhist approach to say that if everyone practiced Buddhism, the world would be a better place. Wars and oppression begin from this kind of thinking. – Sulak Sivaraksa

It is very important to understand that pluralism is part of our system. We don’t all think the same thing and part of our strength is that we come from different perspectives. We have to respect one another even when we disagree with each other. There has to be a spirit of tolerance for the views of others, while also being deeply committed to the positions we hold. If we do that, I think we can coexist and learn to love each other better. – James Dobson

It was once said that this is the land of the free. There is, I believe, a statue out there in the harbor, with something written on it about “Give me your hungry…your oppressed…give me pretty much everybody”-that’s the way I remember it, anyway. The idea of America is a mutt-culture, isn’t it? Who the hell is America if not everybody else? We are-and should be-a big, messy, anarchistic polyglot of dialects and accents and different skin tones…. We need more Latinos to come here. And they should, whenever possible, impregnate our women. – Anthony Bourdain

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

It’s unfortunate that [Louis] Brandeis was not able to translate or abstract his devotion to cultural pluralism and racial equality as he put it for Jews to enslave people and their descendants and to African Americans. – Jeffrey Rosen

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. – Tom G. Palmer

Light and Dark: each was unaware that the other existed. – Ashim Shanker

Many people are trying to remove religion from public life. Under the banner of pluralism, cultural and political leaders are seeking to push all talk about God out of the public arena. – Charles Colson

My favorite single line from the Qur’an is from Surah 49:13, which says that God made us different nations and tribes that we may come to know one another, in the sense that diversity is holy and it was created by God. What we humans are meant to do with that diversity is engage in positive interaction with each other and come to know one another – because knowledge is holy and pluralism or positive engagement is holy. – Eboo Patel

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

Of all the names Polygamy went by (so as not to exasperate the Gentile population and even some of the wives of the members’ own bosoms any more than necessary) — such as Pluralism, Plural or Celestial Wedlock, the Principle, the Doctrine, the New Covenant and the Gospel Dispensation of the Meridian of Consummate Time — the latter was thought to be the least like waving a red flag in front of a bull. But as it was hard to remember and did not make instant or any other kind of sense, it was not much used. – Ardyth Kennelly

One family’s most beloved recipes can become a delicious cornerstone as humanity builds a more pluralistic world where the best pieces of every culture can be enjoyed. – Karen Anderson

One of the best ways of showing pluralism in action is for people to do service together, and that has so many benefits. – Eboo Patel

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. – Samuel Alito

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.Samuel Alito

Our country, like every modern state, needs profound democratic reforms. It needs political and ideological pluralism, a mixed economy and protection of human rights and the opening up of society. – Andrei Sakharov

Perhaps the most striking feature of the [nonprofit] sector is its relative freedom from constraints and its resulting pluralism. – John W. Gardner

Pluralism and monism, philosophical theories that answer “many” and “one,” respectively, to the distinct questions: how many kinds of things are there? and how many things are there? Different answers to each question are compatible, and the possible combination of views provide a popular way of viewing the history of philosophy. – By The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica in pluralism and monism. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved on 5 January 2014.

Proponents of so-called pluralism feel compelled to ban religious considerations from public discourse because they know, instinctively if not intellectually, that their faith is in direct conflict with the God of the Bible, and that in the end the two positions are irreconcilable. – Benjamin Hart

Really, existentialism is a plural term. It just doesn’t have an “s” on the end – Gregory B. Sadler

Religion is important for humanity, but it should evolve with humanity. The first priority is to establish and develop the principle of pluralism in all religious traditions. If we, the religious leaders, cultivate a sincere pluralistic attitude, then everything will be more simple. It is good that most religious leaders are at least beginning to recognize other traditions, even though they may not approve of them. The next step is to accept that the idea of propagating religion is outdated. It no longer suits the times. – Dalai Lama

Religious pluralism is a popular belief in Western culture. At first it sounds very inclusive, but it is really just as exclusive as any other claims. Religious pluralists are those who argue that the “real God” is actually a mix of the gods of all the religions combined (ie. the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Jehovah’s Witness; and we can even throw in ancient Greek gods). By mixing all the major religions, they are discounting the exclusive truth claims to which religions strictly adhere. – Jon Morrison

Religious pluralism is neither mere coexistence nor forced consensus. It is a form of proactive cooperation that affirms the identity of the constituent communities while emphasizing that the well-being of each and all depends on the health of the whole. It is the belief that the common good is best served when each community has a chance to make its unique contribution. – Eboo Patel

Responsibility for collective failure or miscalculation can be avoided by lamenting the absence of good leaders. There appears little willingness to consider that Pakistan might need to review some of the fundamental assumptions in its national belief system—militarism, radical Islamist ideology, perennial conflict with India, dependence on external support, and refusal to recognize ethnic identities and religious pluralism—to break out of permanent crisis mode to a more stable future. – Husain Haqqani

Suppose we concede that if I had been born of Muslim parents in Morocco rather than Christian parents in Michigan, my beliefs would be quite different. [But] the same goes for the pluralist…If the pluralist had been born in [Morocco] he probably wouldn’t be a pluralist. Does it follow that…his pluralist beliefs are produced in him by an unreliable belief-producing process?- Alvin Plantinga

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

The courts demand that every religious person must accommodate a single atheist who might be ‘offended’ at the favorable mention of God’s name. But no atheist can be forced to accommodate a single religious person who might be offended by the atheist’s unbelief, or who wants to be part of the pluralism and diversity about which liberals regularly speak, but which is not broad enough to embrace people who believe in God. – Cal Thomas

The Founders believed that pluralism survived only within the concept of religious liberty espoused by American Christianity. – David Barton

The introduction of political pluralism often quickly led to bad results. – Omar Bongo

The lights became stars,
which became streaks
in the grayspace,
and then networks
of fading
shimmers. – Ashim Shanker

The message of Islam is by no means a closed value system at variance or conflict with other value systems. From the very start, the Prophet did not conceive the content of his message as the expression of pure otherness versus what the Arabs or the other societies of his time were producing. Islam does not establish a closed universe of reference but rather relies on a set of universal principles that can coincide with the fundamentals and values of other beliefs and religious traditions (even those produced by a polytheistic society such as that of Mecca at the time). Islam is a message of justice that entails resisting oppression and protecting the dignity of the oppressed and the poor, and Muslims must recognize the moral value of a law or contract stipulating this requirement, whoever its authors and whatever the society, Muslim or not. Far from building an allegiance to Islam in which recognition and loyalty are exclusive to the community of faith, the Prophet strove to develop the believer’s conscience through adherence to principles transcending closed allegiances in the name of a primary loyalty to universal principles themselves. The last message brings nothing new to the affirmation of the principles of human dignity, justice, and equality: it merely recalls and confirms them. As regards moral values, the same intuition is present when the Prophet speaks of the equalities of individuals before and in Islam: ‘The best among you [as to their human and moral qualities] during the era before Islam [al-jahiliyyah] are the best in Islam, provided they understand it [Islam].’ The moral value of a human being reaches far beyond belonging to a particular universe of reference; within Islam, it requires added knowledge and understanding in order to grasp properly what Islam confirms (the principle of justice) and what it demands should be reformed (all forms of idol worship). – Tariq Ramadan

The modern state does not comprehend how anyone can be guided by something other than itself. In its eyes pluralism is treason. – Richard M. Weaver

The prevailing notion is that the state should be neutral as to religion, and furthermore, that the best way to be neutral about it is to avoid all mention of it. By this sort of logic, nudism is the best compromise among different styles of dress. The secularist version of ‘pluralism’ amounts to theological nudism. – Joseph Sobran

The primacy of class in politics was challenged during the 1970s and 1980s, in particular, by the rise of the ‘new social movements’ (including feminism, gay and lesbian liberationism, the anti-nuclear movement, and environmentalism). The proliferation of these movements, and the increasing recognition that no subject’s identity could be explained exclusively in terms of one axis (race, gender, or sexual orientation) brought forth disquiet with one dimensional accounts of oppression, such as Marxism (with its sole focus on class). – Moya Lloyd

The promises of Fidel Castro’s so-called revolution of pluralism and democracy, were and continue to be a false promise and a betrayal of all basic human rights. – Andy Garcia

The real causes of terrorism are not poverty and oppression per se, but rather the bankruptcy of materialist ideologies, like Neo-Conservatism, which promise much but deliver little. The central doctrine of Neo-Conservatism is “democratic capitalism.” This is the ultimate oxymoron, because in practice the political pluralism that should underlie democracy cannot exist in a climate of economic plutocracy. – Robert Dickson Crane

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. The only real radicalism in our time will come as it always has from people who insist on thinking for themselves and who reject party-mindedness. – Christopher Hitchens

The secular state is the guarantee of religious pluralism. This apparent paradox, again, is the simplest and most elegant of political truths. – Christopher Hitchens

The self identity of Man is transcultural, and thus cannot have any single point of reference. Pluralism is not synonymous with tolerance of a variety of opinions. Pluralism amounts to the recognition of the unthinkable, the absurd, and up to a limit, intolerable. Reality in itself does not need to be transparent intelligible. – Raimon Panikkar

The spirit of the Knowledge Society is the spirit of pluralism a readiness to accept the Other, indeed to learn from him, to see difference as an opportunity rather than a threat. – His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan IV

The true victory is the victory for democracy and pluralism. – Hosni Mubarak

The truth of literature and art has always been granted (if it was granted at all) as one of a “higher” order, which should not and indeed did not disturb the order of business. What has changed in the contemporary period is the difference between the two orders and their truths. The absorbent power of society depletes the artistic dimension by assimilating its antagonistic contents. In the realm of culture, the new totalitarianism manifests itself precisely in a harmonizing pluralism, where the most contradictory works and truths peacefully coexist in indifference. – Herbert Marcuse

The tyranny of Harvard and Yale is another thing that transcends this problem of the set point. But what’s so striking about [Louis] Brandeis is he had this vision of cultural pluralism that completely gave the lie to the idea that there was any inconsistency between being Jewish or being a woman or being African American and being fully American. – Jeffrey Rosen

There is no clump called “I” moving from this spot to that spot, instant by instant. Rather, through particular encounters with particular people, within each encounter, within each transition, something called “I” makes its appearance. Thus it is that what seems to be an object outside yourself is, in reality, your complement, that which gives this instant of your life its glow. – Soko Morinaga

There should be pluralism – the concept of many religions, many truths. But we must also be careful not to become nihilistic. – Dalai Lama

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

This stance makes no distinction between (1) the pluralistic standpoint of making sure people have equal rights and (2) the act of co-dependently making sure not to hurt anyone’s feelings, however irrational they may be. We need to stop that nonsense. Getting your feelings hurt, quite frankly, is the price of living a in a free society. – Gudjon Bergmann

Those are big challenges in our age, not just how we live as co-citizens in societies with people of different faiths and different cultures – I mean, that’s a big challenge itself – but how we think about all that as Christians, or as Jews, or as Muslims, or as Hindus. How do we think about the religious other? There’s a theological dimension as well as a civic dimension to our pluralism. – Diana L. Eck

To respect the opinions of those who stand against you is nothing short of courageous. – Raif Badawi

To see the other side, to defend another people, not despite your tradition but because of it, is the heart of pluralism. – Eboo Patel

Today, sensitivities are at an all-time high – and rightfully so. Tolerance of different races and religions have been lacking over the years, but pluralism has given way to relativism. – Ravi Zacharias

Tolerance is the price we pay for living in a free, pluralistic society. – Robert Casey

Unlike multiculturalism, cultural pluralism doesn’t just mean diversity but also togetherness – primarily the understanding of the rules of the game – the European values structure. – Bassam Tibi

Up is infinite. Down is infinite. Pantheism, dualism, pluralism! – John Cowper Powys

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.” – Stephen Jay Gould

Walter Mignolo terms and articulates critical cosmopolitanism, juxtaposing it with globalization, which is a process of “the homogeneity of the planet from above––economically, politically and culturally.” Although _globalization from below is to counter globalization from above from the experience and perspective of those who suffer from the consequences of globalization from above, cosmopolitanism differs, according to Mignolo, form these two types of globalization. Mignolo defines globalization as ‘a set of designs to manage the world,’ and cosmopolitanism as ‘a set of projects toward planetary conviviality. – Namsoon Kang

We are engaged in a social, political, and cultural war. There’s a lot of talk in America about pluralism. But the bottom line is somebody’s values will prevail. And the winner gets the right to teach our children what to believe. – Gary Bauer

We believe that religions are basically the same…they only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation. – Steve Turner

We can’t blame the entire Muslim society because of the mischievous acts of a few individuals. Therefore, at the general public level we must cultivate the notion of not just one religion, one truth, but pluralism and many truths. We can change the atmosphere, and we can modify certain ways of thinking. – Dalai Lama

We establish no religion in this country. We command no worship. We mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are and must remain separate. – Ronald Reagan

We in the United States, above all, must remember that lesson, for we were founded as a nation of openness to people of all beliefs. And so we must remain. Our very unity has been strengthened by our pluralism. We establish no religion in this country, we command no worship, we mandate no belief, nor will we ever. Church and state are, and must remain, separate. All are free to believe or not believe, all are free to practice a faith or not, and those who believe are free, and should be free, to speak of and act on their belief. – Ronald Reagan

We must move from … the primacy of technology toward considerations of social justice and equity, from the dictates of organizational convenience toward the aspirations ofself realization and learning, from authoritarianism and dogmatism toward more participation, from uniformity and centralization toward diversity and pluralism, from the concept of work as hard and unavoidable, from life as nasty, brutish, and short toward work as purpose and self~fulfillment, a recognition of leisure as a valid activity in itself. – Warren G. Bennis

We need the value and the beauty of democracy, and the beauty of pluralism is there’s a free exchange of ideas. Nobody is right all the time. I’m not right all the time. I don’t agree with anybody all the time, and I don’t even agree with myself all the time. – Rick Warren

We see pluralism: We can see that there are different ideological and political positions in Russia. If the authoritarianism finally ends, we will have real competition. – Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

We will keep a commitment to pluralism and not discriminate for or against Methodist or Mormons or Muslims or good people with no faith at all. – George W. Bush

What we are witnessing is the failure of humanistic, postmodern, and pluralistic worldviews to see beyond the horizon of their own worldview. – Shahar Rabi

What we pluralists have to do is to say to the people standing on the faith line, particularly the young ones, no, pluralism is the wish of the creator. It is the greatest opportunity for humanity. – Eboo Patel

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

When I came here [to Malaysia] I heard that there is a problem with the concept of pluralism whereby pluralism is understood in a very narrow way, which I think is wrong. This is not to diminish your sense of truth in what you believe but to acknowledge the fact that we live in a world where we need to deal with pluralism. It’s a fact. – Tariq Ramadan

Whenever one comes to the the table for interreligous dialogue, there is what I would call an ecumenical taboo that one has to comply with. The ecumenical taboo_ does not exist in a written document, but people tend to practice it around the dialogue table. One should not raise, for instance, such questions as gender justice, sexual orientation issues, religious constructions of the other, multiple forms of violence in a religious community, or religious cooperation with neo/imperialism. each religion has its own history of sin that has justified and perpetuated oppression and exclusion of certain groups of people through its own religious teaching, doctrine, and practice. In order to be nice and tolerant to one another, interreligious dialogue has not challenged the fundamental issues of injustice that a particular religion has practiced, justified, and perpetuated in various ways. I do not disregard that most ecumenists have based interreligious dialogue on a politics of tolerance, and this has played a significant role in easing the antagonism between religions, at least among the leaders of established religions. However, we should ground an authentic ecumenism and theology of religion in a politics of affirmation and transformation, rather than a politics of tolerance. – Namsoon Kang

Yet while I do this work because of my faith, I also recognize of course that in a pluralistic society there are many different perspectives. It is both unrealistic and wrong to insist that everyone hold my views, my faith. The place we meet, in our differences, is in the founding documents of our democratic republic. – Simone Campbell

Quotes from Wikiquote

• Tolerance, openness and understanding towards other peoples’ cultures, social structures, values and faiths are now essential to the very survival of an interdependent world.
  • Aga Khan IV, in a speech at the Ceremony to Inaugurate the Restored Humayun’s Tomb Gardens – New Delhi, India (15 April 2003)

• Pluralism is no longer simply an asset or a prerequisite for progress and development, it is vital to our existence.
  • Aga Khan IV, in a speech at the Ceremony to Inaugurate the Restored Humayun’s Tomb Gardens, New Delhi, India (15 April 2003)

• A secure pluralistic society requires communities that are educated and confident both in the identity and depth of their own traditions and in those of their neighbours.
  • Aga Khan IV, in an address at the Leadership and Diversity Conference Gatineau, Quebec, Canada (19 May 2004)

• Pluralist societies are not accidents of history. They are a product of enlightened education and continuous investment by governments and all of civil society in recognizing and celebrating the diversity of the world’s peoples.
  • Aga Khan IV, in a speech on Democratic Development, Pluralism and Civil Society delivered at the Nobel Institute, Oslo, Norway (7 April 2005). [1]

• I believe leadership everywhere must continuously work to ensure that pluralism, and all its benefits, become top global priorities. In this effort, civil society has a vital role. By its very nature, civil society is pluralist because it seeks to speak for the multiple interests not represented by the state. I refer, for example, to organisations which ensure best practices such as legal societies and associations of accountants, doctors and engineers. The meritocracy they represent is the very foundation of pluralism. And meritocracy is one of the principles of democracy itself.
  • Aga Khan IV, in a speech on Democratic Development, Pluralism and Civil Society delivered at the Nobel Institute, Oslo, Norway (7 April 2005). [2]

• We cannot make the world safe for democracy unless we also make the world safe for diversity.
  • Aga Khan IV, in an address by His Highness the Aga Khan to the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University,(15 May 2006)

• The spirit of the Knowledge Society is the spirit of Pluralism—a readiness to accept the Other, indeed to learn from him, to see difference as an opportunity rather than a threat.
  • Aga Khan IV, in an address to the 2006 Convocation of the Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan (2 December 2006)]

• All earlier pluralist societies destroyed themselves because no one took care of the common good. They abounded in communities but could not sustain community, let alone create it.
  • Peter Drucker, in The New Pluralism Leader to Leader, No. 14 (Fall 1999)

• Cultural pluralism is the only thing we all have in common.
  • Tom Heehler, in The Well-Spoken Thesaurus ( 2011)

• Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial, the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade.
  • R. A. Lafferty, in The Flame is Green (1971), Ch. 5

• Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate
  • Plurality is never to be posited without necessity.
    • Quaestiones et decisiones in quattuor libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi [Questions and the decisions of the Sentences of Peter Lombard] (1495), i, dist. 27, qu. 2, K; also in The Development of Logic (1962), by William Calvert Kneale, p. 243; similar statements were common among Scholastic philosophers, at least as early as John Duns (Duns Scotus).
  • Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate.
    • William of Ockham as cited in “The Myth of Occam’s Razor” by William Thorburn, in Mind, Vol. 27 (1918), 345-353

• At few periods in modern history, has the mission of building pluralistic societies been more important than at present. Celebrating the diversity of perspectives and opinions, faiths and cultures, languages and traditions is a prerequisite to building harmonious and successful societies.
  • Firoz Rasul President of Aga Khan University, in an address to the 2006 Convocation of the Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan, (2 December 2006)

• The real intent of my writing is not to say, you must think in this way. The real intent is: here are some of the many important facets of this extraordinary Kosmos; have you thought about including them in your own worldview? My work is an attempt to make room in the Kosmos for all of the dimensions, levels, domains, waves, memes, modes, individuals, cultures, and so on ad infinitum. I have one major rule: everybody is right. More specifically, everybody — including me — has some important pieces of the truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace. To Freudians I say, Have you looked at Buddhism? To Buddhists I say, Have you studied Freud? To liberals I say, Have you thought about how important some conservative ideas are? To conservatives I say, Can you perhaps include a more liberal perspective? And so on, and so on, and so on… At no point I have ever said: Freud is wrong, Buddha is wrong, liberals are wrong, conservatives are wrong. I have only suggested that they are true but partial. My critical writings have never attacked the central beliefs of any discipline, only the claims that the particular discipline has the only truth — and on those grounds I have often been harsh. But every approach, I honestly believe, is essentially true but partial, true but partial, true but partial.
  And on my own tombstone, I dearly hope that someday they will write: He was true but partial…
  • Ken Wilber, in his Introduction to the Collected Works of Ken Wilber, vol. VIII (2000)