“There can be no freedom if one man or one group of men... is assumed... inherently perfect or perfectible. Its claim to perfection or perfectibility is a claim to absolute rule.”
Source: 1930s- 1950s, The Future of Industrial Man (1942), p. 122
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Peter F. Drucker180
American business consultant 1909–2005Related quotes
Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet
Ibid., p. 150
The Book of Disquiet
Original: O homem perfeito do pagão era a perfeição do homem que há; o homem perfeito do cristão a perfeição do homem que não há; o homem perfeito do budista a perfeição de não haver homem.
Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer
II 12 as translated by Dorothea Waley Singer (1950)
De immenso (1591)
Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader
From an Interview with John Wood of the Boston Globe with Guru Maharaj Ji in Newton, Massachusetts, August 3, 1973, published in And It Is Divine ~ Dec. 1973, Volume 2. Issue 2.
1970s
Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India
1940s, To Every Briton (1940)
Context: This is no appeal made by a man who does not know his business. I have been practising with scientific precision non-violence and its possibilities for an unbroken period of over fifty years. I have applied it in every walk of life, domestic, institutional, economic and political. I know of no single case in which it has failed. Where it has seemed sometimes to have failed, I have ascribed it to my imperfections. I claim no perfection for my self. But I do claim to be a passionate seeker after Truth, which is but another name for God. In the course of the search the discovery of non-violence came to me. Its spread is my life-mission. I have no interest in living except for the prosecution of that mission.
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854–1939) American journalist and anarchist
Voluntary Cooperation a Remedy http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/tucker/tucker15.html <br class="br">Individual Liberty (1926)
“No religion is absolutely perfect.”
Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru
Mother India's Lighthouse: India's Spiritual Leaders (1971)
Context: No religion is absolutely perfect. Yet not only do we fight for religion, but also are we often willing to sacrifice our lives for it. And what we hopelessly fail to do is to live it. A true religion is that which has no caste, no creed, no colour. It is but an all-uniting and all-pervading embrace.