Ernest Andre Gellner Quotes

The condition of our survival in any but the meagerest existence is our willingness to accommodate ourselves to the conflicting interests of others, to learn to live in a social world.

Yet we can maintain a free society only if we recognize that in a free society no one can win all the time. No one can have his own way all the time, and no one is right all the time.

Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures.

On this land, Muslims, Christians and Jews can coexist together, as they have - as they had for the - for hundreds of years in the framework of a democratic state.

Our right to disagree is precious but fragile. The best way to protect and preserve it is to let the other side speak without demonizing them or destroying their right to be heard. Such civil exchanges are the heart beat of democracy - essential to keeping it alive.

If you love things or ideas or people that contradict each other, you have to be prepared to fight for every square inch of intellectual real estate you occupy.

We should accept diversity and pluralism and learn to live in them, and learn how to grow in them, without losing our identity and compromising ourselves

The real guarantee of freedom is an equilibrium of social forces in conflict, not the triumph of any one force.

The main hope of harmony in our troubled world lies rather in the plurality of our identities, which intertwine with each other and are resistant to drastic divisions

If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.

A free and open society is an on-going conflict, interrupted periodically by compromises.

Agreeing to disagree is a prerogative only of those who live under a democratic system.

I was told to challenge every spiritual teacher, every world leader to utter the one sentence that no religion, no political party, and no nation on the face of the earth will dare utter: 'Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.

I write a world where everyone is partly right.

The very moment you understand that being a Muslim and being American or European are not mutually exclusive, you enrich your society. Promote the universal principles of justice and freedom, and leave the societies elsewhere to find their model of democracy based on their collective psychology and cultural heritage.

The best thing we can do if we want the Russians to let us be Americans is to let the Russians be Russian.

When Zionism becomes co-extensive with Jewishness, Jewishness is pitted against the diversity that defines democracy, and if I may say so, betrays one of the most important ethical dimensions of the diasporic Jewish tradition: namely, the obligation of co-habitation with those different from ourselves.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships of the same intimacy.

To be frank, it sometimes seems that the American idea of freedom has more to do with my freedom to do what I want than your freedom to do what you want. I think that, in Europe, we're probably better at understanding how to balance those competing claims, though not a lot.

I'm an extreme libertarian, but I realize we're in a democracy, and in a democracy, people can have views of all stripes, and there's no reason to argue about it.

It will take more initiatives, both from within and beyond immigrant circles, to prevent Salafists and other Islamists from achieving the upper hand with their anti-democratic authoritarianism.

In a multi-racial society, trust, understanding and tolerance are the cornerstones of peace and order

Believing in each culture's right to be understood by the other party without any form of falseness or distortion is paramount.

Because we are a democracy, there will be “winners” and “losers” on policy issues and curriculum decisions. But if the different perspectives have been given full and fair hearing and if every effort has been made to protect the conscience of all parents and students, then even those who may “lose” on a particular policy will most likely remain supporters of the public schools.