“So the idea that there is nothing essential, in the sense that there are no human universals, is dogma. Ask most anyone who is going to be shot at dawn.”

— Catharine A. MacKinnon

"Postmodernism and Human Rights" (2000), p. 53
Are Women Human?: and Other International Dialogues (2006)

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Catharine A. MacKinnon 28

American feminist and legal activist 1946

Sidney Morgenbesser (1921–2004) American philosopher

Remembering Sidney Morgenbesser, https://web.archive.org/web/20040821091507/http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/getmailfiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:ArticleToMail&Type=text/html&Path=NYS/2004/08/03&ID=Ar01400 by Gary Shapiro in 'The New York Sun' 3 August 2004 (Archived by Wayback Machine).

“Nothing is so essential as dignity…Time will reveal who has it and who has it not.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

Source: The Signature of All Things

“Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the universe… Anthroposophists are those who experience, as an essential need of life, certain questions on the nature of the human being and the universe, just as one experiences hunger and thirst.”

Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) Austrian esotericist

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts (1924)

“There are ideas within Buddhism that are so incredible as to render the dogma of the virgin birth plausible by comparison.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Killing the Buddha" http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=2903&Itemid=247 (March 2006)
2000s

“Idealism is based on big ideas. And, as anybody who has ever been asked "What's the big idea?" knows, most big ideas are bad ones.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Story of the Malakand Field Force

The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (1898), Chapter X.
Early career years (1898–1929)
Variant: There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at with no result.

“A disciple asked, "Who is a Master?"
The Master replied, "Anyone to whom it is given to let go of the ego. Such a person's life is then a masterpiece."”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 47

“Any liberal system must proceed from the assumption that freedom is one and indivisible and that elementary human freedom in all spheres of life must go hand in hand with political, religious, economic and spiritual freedom. The strategy of collectivist thinking has always been to split up this most essential and most universal of human values as a means of making inroads into the free system itself.”

Ludwig Erhard (1897–1977) German politician

The Economics of Success (D. van Nostrand & Co., 1963), pp. 291–292

“Philosophizing means, then, to ascend from public dogma to essentially private knowledge.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Source: Natural Right and History (1953), p. 12

“It was the essential freedom from dogma and the scientific outlook of Marxism that appealed to me.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Autobiography (1936; 1949; 1958)
Context: Russia apart, the theory and philosophy of Marxism lightened up many a dark corner of my mind. History came to have a new meaning for me. The Marxist interpretation threw a flood of light on it... It was the essential freedom from dogma and the scientific outlook of Marxism that appealed to me. p. 362-363

“So the idea that there is nothing essential, in the sense that there are no human universals, is dogma. Ask most anyone who is going to be shot at dawn.”

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Catharine A. MacKinnon 28

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