"Wrestlers have a term for the official story told to the audience, the fiction the performers maintain for the benefit of the show: kayfabe. While kayfabe was once a strict , nowadays just about everyone knows that wrestling is staged. Yet even today, because it is essential to the performance, wrestlers rarely break kayfabe and betray the fiction in the ring. Nevertheless, breaking kayfabe is more common than it once was, in part because performers can break kayfabe to advance their strategic goals in and out of the ring. It is the same with judicial opinions. Judges adhere to a analogous to kayfabe when they refuse to explain the Court's behavior by reference to changes in the Court's composition. Judicial kayfabe demands that opinions explain the Court's behavior according to legal rules and principles, even when criticizing it. This norm leads to some unusually artficial opinions that seem oblivious to the political forces that influence and constitute the Court's membership."

"Faith becomes operative in the Christian on the basis of the gift received, the love which attracts our hearts to Christ (cf. Gal 5:6), and enables us to become part of the Church’s great pilgrimage through history until the end of the world. For those who have been transformed in this way, a new way of seeing opens up, faith becomes light for their eyes."

"Since faith is a light, it draws us into itself, inviting us to explore ever more fully the horizon which it illumines, all the better to know the object of our love."

"An image of this seeking can be seen in the Magi, who were led to Bethlehem by the star (cf. Mt 2:1-12). For them God’s light appeared as a journey to be undertaken, a star which led them on a path of discovery."

"Faith, received from God as a supernatural gift, becomes a light for our way, guiding our journey through time"

"Faith is passed on, we might say, by contact, from one person to another, just as one candle is lighted from another"

"All the truths in which we believe point to the mystery of the new life of faith as a journey of communion with the living God."

"The omen was foretold, and now we have a fear more grave. Today I saw the day become like night. I saw a man run with the jaguar. We must not let this man make feet from us."

"Εἷς οἰωνὸς ἄριστος ἀμύνεσθαι περὶ πάτρης."

"Alas, why gnaw you so your nether lip? Some bloody passion shakes your very frame; These are portents; but yet I hope, I hope, They do not point on me."

"The sweet imperious mouth, whose haughty valor Defied all portents of impending doom."

"“We have searched the seas, and have waited for the omens to come to pass.” Foamfollower paused to look thoughtfully at Covenant, then went on: “Ah, my Lords, omening is curious. So much is said—and so little made clear.”"

"This was an omen for sure, but one with no obvious meaning."

"Fourteen clear signs of omen in the gem With which Medea human fate foretold"

"Without a sign his sword the brave man draws, And asks no omen but his country's cause."

"Perfect knowledge of such things cannot be acquired without divine inspiration, given that all prophetic inspiration derives its initial origin from God Almighty, then from chance and nature. Since all these portents are produced impartially, prophecy comes to pass partly as predicted. For understanding created by the intellect cannot be acquired by means of the occult, only by the aid of the zodiac, bringing forth that small flame by whose light part of the future may be discerned. We need god to prosper those without him will not."

"I claim that the success of current scientific theories is no miracle. It is not even surprising to the scientific (Darwinist) mind. For any scientific theory is born into a life of fierce competition, a jungle red in tooth and claw. Only the successful theories survive—the ones which in fact latched onto the actual regularities in nature."

"The most common misunderstanding about science is that scientists seek and find truth. They don't — they make and test models."

"A scientific theory is usually felt to be better than its predecessors not only in the sense that it is a better instrument for discovering and solving puzzles but also because it is somehow a better representation of what nature is really like. One often hears that successive theories grow ever closer to, or approximate more and more closely to, the truth. Apparently generalizations like that refer not to the puzzle-solutions and the concrete predictions derived from a theory but rather to its ontology, to the match, that is, between the entities with which the theory populates nature and what is “really there.”"

"Characteristics of a scientific theory"

"Scientific inquiry has led to immense explanatory and technological successes, partly as a result of the pervasiveness of scientific theories. Relativity theory, evolutionary theory, and plate tectonics were, and continue to be, wildly successful families of theories within physics, biology, and geology. Other powerful theory clusters inhabit comparatively recent disciplines such as cognitive science, climate science, molecular biology, microeconomics, and Geographic Information Science (GIS). Effective scientific theories magnify understanding, help supply legitimate explanations, and assist in formulating predictions. Moving from their knowledge-producing representational functions to their interventional roles (Hacking 1983), theories are integral to building technologies used within consumer, industrial, and scientific milieus."

"The authors define a data type (following Scott's work) as "a set of operations specifying an interpretation of values of a universal value space." These data types are themselves elements of a universal domain. Variables are not considered. Data types are treated as arguments to procedures, functions, and data types."

"An ideal founded wholly on worldly ambitions and passions necessarily partakes of their transitory, material nature, and is devoted to presenting them in every possible variety as the ultimate of human desire. Its forms may be legitimate and wholesome. They are apt to be selfish, sensual, or foolish; but the moment human aspirations rise above a mundane level into an ideal atmosphere of the godlike, be it of Olympus or Paradise, it lifts Art bodily into a more elevated sphere. However greatly the virtue of Pagan may differ from the virtue of Christian Art proper, both seek to exalt humanity by presenting to it examples of an ideal perfection, and eliminating whatever corrupts and makes a lie. We may have an agreeable Art speaking to the sensations, or an intellectual one to the mind, on the plane of the ideal; but no Art can be profoundly great, beautiful, and good, unless its aspirations are stimulated by hopes and visions that have not their exact counterpart and fruition in our earthly being. In its largest sense, religion is that state of the soul which ardently craves ideal goodness, beauty, and felicity. Art that ignores it has no permanent, universal value."

"No doubt every scientific application assumes certain philosophic postulates which criticism has readily discovered: for instance, that there are laws of nature; that the principle of causality is of universal value, and of necessary application to phenomena, etc. This is used to prove—poor victory—that every philosopher and moralist alike does the same without hesitation, so that neither science nor ethics is independent of philosophic criticism."

"The common but erroneous belief is that military discipline only has a military value. The fallacy of this belief was strikingly demonstrated a short time since when the steamer Plymouth was run down by the City of Taunton. Seventy-five soldiers [Marines] were on board the Plymouth and they were the heroes of the accident. They behaved splendidly and rendered valuable assistance in preventing the loss of life. It is not however as an exhibition of the courage of individuals that the performance of the soldiers appeals to the reflecting mind. These men responded not to any daring impulse of the occasion, but to the prompting of what has become a constant, every-moment factor in their lives—the habit of discipline. The Plymouth incident, then, so far as the soldiers are concerned becomes one of the many illustrations of the universal value of that habit. Courage is a quality that makes men ready to do any dare. Discipline imparts unity, method and strength to the doing and daring. In such an emergency as that on the Plymouth not the least of the strength lies in the example of coolness and precision set by the disciplined."

"I maintain that Congress is bound to take care, by some proper means, to secure a good currency for the people; and that, while this duty remains unperformed, one great object of the Constitution is not attained. If we are to have as many different currencies as there are States, and these currencies are to be liable to perpetual fluctuation, it would be folly to say that we had reached that security and uniformity in commercial regulations, which we know it was the purpose of the Constitution to establish. The banks may all of them resume to-morrow—I hope they will; but how much will this resumption accomplish? It will doubtless afford good local currencies; but will it give the country any proper and safe paper currency, of equal and universal value? Certainly it cannot, and will not. Will it bring back, for any length of time, exchanges to the state they were in, where there was a National currency in existence? ...it will not. We may heap gold bags upon gold bags, we may create what securities, in the constitution of local banks, we please, but we cannot give to any such bank a character that shall insure the receipt of its notes, with equal readiness, everywhere throughout the valley of the Mississippi, and from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to the St. Lawrence. Nothing can accomplish this, but an institution which is National in its character. The people desire to see, in their currency, the marks of this nationality. They like to see the spread eagle, and where they see that, they have confidence."

"The commercial part should be non-technical, and be a clear statement of the results of the year, in so far as they may be of value to the farmer, gardener, stock-raiser, etc. The scientific part should state with equal clearness and brevity the facts and deductions of permanent and universal value, and point out their relation to what has been previously established. Some such plan of making the material of these reports more available would add to the good reputation of the institutions and to their usefulness."

"The true artist... is never satisfied to merely reproduce his own impressions, or even his liveliest fancies; he will use them; but they will be recreated, purged of their dross, and reproduced in a form adequate to the revelation of his idea of the perfection of beauty. In so doing, he will be loyal to nature and truth; for that also is a law of art; he will also obey the imperious technical laws of form; yet the highest worth of his work will be derived from the ideal which he impresses on the finished product. It is this principle... which underlies the long controversy between the three leading 'isms of art—impressionism, realism (or naturalism), and idealism. In the somewhat tedious dispute between the representatives of these theories the fact has often been obscured that they are only three different ways of interpreting the final purpose of art, its universal value, its perfection. ...each contains an essential element of the whole truth; though when taken by itself each is an exaggeration."

"Money does not derive its value from the stamp of the government. Gold and silver were valuable before they were coined into money. It was their value, their universal value, a value less changeable than that of other articles of trade, which induced governments to coin them. They had value in every trading country, and in part of it, and their beauty made them precious, even with the barbarian and the savage. They were and are still a species of Universal Merchandize. Coining is measuring them. It facilitates trade in them, but does not their value otherwise than by increasing the for them."

"The true purpose of Shari'a, or divine law, can be found in one of the principle purposes of the message of Islam—namely, to set forth a universal value system for interaction among humans and, in that context, to replace brutal and reprehensible tribal laws and customs founded on the tribal bond with new, wider-ranging principles of justice, equity, and compassion founded on the bond of Islam. The Holy Qur'an sets forth, unequivocally, the true meaning and purpose of the Shari'a in Verses Q4:26 to 28. Allah wants to make clear to you [the lawful from the unlawful] and guide you to the [good] practices of those before you and to accept your repentance. And Allah is knowing and wise (26). Allah wants to accept your repentance, but those who follow [their] passions want you to digress [into] a great deviation (27). And Allah wants to lighten for you [your difficulties]; and mankind was created weak (28)."

"It is fair to conclude that religion is universal in two senses. On the one hand it springs from a universal need. On the other hand, it possesses a universal value, and cannot fail, however much of error or blindness there may be in it, to elevate and dignify life. True religion is better than false, but it is not less certain that religion is better than irreligion."

"It is this universal value which utterly unfits gold for an internal money. Our currency must not be "concerned in foreign commerce," for foreign commerce is barter—manufactured articles in exchange for raw material,—and even if gold enters into the transaction, it is as a commodity, and not as a money, for our mint coinage is not recognised by the foreigner. The very first essential of a money is, that it shall have no value in the eyes of other nations, for its prime object is, that it shall remain at home, to fructify trade, facilitate exchanges, furnish the till and the purse, pay wages and housekeeping expenses, and, finally, to give the subject the wherewithal to pay the taxes the State and the Municipality demand of him."

"Some masterpieces will ever have a universal meaning for all mankind. The European can find keen pleasure in Japanese art, and Shakespeare's plays have long been translated into Chinese and acted in China. Yet if art can transcend space, can it also transcend time? The modes of art vary from age to age no less than the modes of human thought."

"I challenge the multiculturalist attack on personal autonomy as a universal ideal. This attack is often based on forms of cultural relativism. In opposition to relativism, I propose value pluralism—a view associated in particular with Isaiah Berlin—a more satisfactory ethical starting point; one that balances recognition of legitimate cultural diversity with the possibility of intercultural criticism. However, Berlinian pluralism, too, has been used recently as a platform for the multiculturalist attack on personal autonomy in the work of John Gray, Bhikhu Parekh and William Galston. ...this tendency rests on a misunderstanding. ...Berlinian pluralism is primarily about the plurality of goods, not cultures. ...Far from undermining personal autonomy as a universal value, Berlinian value pluralism generates a distinctive argument in its favour. ...cultural relativism holds that cultures are indefeasible moral authorities."

"To win the war against terrorism and help shape a more peaceful world, we must speak to the hundreds of millions of moderate and tolerant people in the Muslim world... who aspire to enjoy the blessings of freedom and democracy and free enterprise. These values are sometimes described as 'Western values,' but, in fact, we see them in Asia and elsewhere because they are universal values borne of a common human aspiration."

"Cultural and civilizational diversity challenges the Western and particularly American belief in the universal relevance of Western culture. This belief is expressed both descriptively and normatively. Descriptively it holds that people in all societies want to adopt Western values, institutions, and practices. If they seem not to have that desire and to be committed to their own traditional cultures, they are victims of "false consciousness" comparable to that which Marxists found among proletarians who supported capitalism. Normatively the Western universalist belief posits that people throughout the world should embrace Western values, institutions, and culture because they embody the highest, most enlightened, most liberal, most modern, and most civilized thinking of humankind. In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous."

"The state of consensus is the unanimity of views... regarding the existence and validity of a specific value. Prohibition against genocide, for example, is absolute. ...Absolute unanimity is often an unattainable strict standard... Universal Democracy acknowledges the difficulty of achieving absolute unanimity... Instead, it adopts a more realistic standard. ...Under the extensive consensus standard, no one continent, civilization or legal tradition will be able to successfully claim that its values are universal. And yet no one nation, by withholding its participation or consent, will be able to veto the emergence of a universal value. Even a few nations scattered across the globe cannot..."

"Universal values are created by means of contract. Treaties and customs [are] the two major sources of universal values. ...flexibility allows nations to modify or even repeal universal values. ...Peremptory norms of general international law, also known as jus cogens, share the attributes of "permanent" universal values. ...Universal Democracy does not embrace the notion that all universal values are timeless. ...even a peremptory norm can be modified."

"Universal values are... more acutely needed, in this age of globalization, than ever before. ...In the Universal Declaration, we proclaimed that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services”. ...in the Millennium Declaration, all States reaffirmed certain fundamental values... freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature, and shared responsibility. They adopted practical, achievable targets–-the Millennium Development Goals –- for relieving the blight of extreme poverty and making such rights as education, basic health care and clean water a reality for all. We have seen what disastrous consequences... particularist value systems can have: ethnic cleansing, genocide, terrorism, and the spread of fear, hatred and discrimination. ...this is a time to reassert our universal values. ...we must not allow ...a “clash of civilisations”, in which millions of flesh-and-blood human beings fall victim to a battle between two abstractions –- “Islam” and “the West” –- as if Islamic and Western values were incompatible. ...the validity of universal values does not depend on their being universally obeyed or applied. Ethical codes are always the expression of an ideal and an aspiration, a standard by which moral failings can be judged rather than a prescription for ensuring that they never occur. ...We need to be able to say that certain actions and beliefs... should be rejected by all humanity. ...The function of universal values is not to eliminate all... differences, but rather to help us manage them with mutual respect, and without resorting to mutual destruction. ...traditions survive best, not when they are rigid and immutable, but when they are living and open to new ideas, from within and from without. ...We need to do everything we can to improve the United Nations... to make it more useful to the world’s peoples... and more exemplary in applying the universal values that all its members claim to accept. ...we need to be more effective ...especially in what we do to promote and protect human rights. ...Do we still have universal values? Yes... They need to be carefully thought through. They need to be defended. They need to be strengthened. And we need to find within ourselves the will to live by the values we proclaim –- in our private lives, in our local and national societies, and in the world."

"There are rules of conduct higher than caprice or individual interest. Each man has a knowledge of these rules, and it is sufficient for him to conform himself thereto. He is convinced that so to conform himself, even if it be the cause of serious evils to him, is his duty, and, all considered, is the best he can do. ...There is only one means of freeing ourselves from the difficulties indicated, and that is to render our knowledge of the rules explicit, complete, rationally connected and ordered, i.e. to reduce the chaotic aggregate of rules to a system, to make a science of it—Moral Science."

"Despite dissent [such as from the United States] a universal value has come into being, that an International Criminal Court should be established to prosecute and punish the most serious crimes defined in the Rome Statute."

"The opposition 'Islam versus the West' appears less relevant if one refers to the other Third World 'cultural areas', which tend to agree with the Muslim countries in their critiques of Western cultural and political encroachments. By identifying democracy with Western culture and reproducing the clash-of-civilizations paradigm, many non-Western regimes of course want to delegitimise democracy as a universal concept. They love Huntington's statement that 'claims that Western values are universally relevant are false, immoral and dangerous'. By contrast, many US 'universalists' firmly believe that democracy is a universal value..."

"President George W. Bush viewed freedom as a universal value, with religious freedom as the preeminent characteristic of free, robust societies. With this assumption, he viewed the post-9/11 conflict with the Taliban and al-Qaeda as a battle over freedom. He believed that repressed Iraqis and Afghans would welcome the U.S. military as liberators bringing greater freedom, to include freedom of religion. President Bush's assumptions were only partially validated. Part of the problem was the dissonance between a Western concept of freedom to choose and worship God over against an Islamic concept to submit to God. Bush's construct of Religion as Freedom did not offer the optimal framework."

"Respect for the values of discrete cultures cannot and should not be equated with the identity politics of self-exclusion that leads to a conflict in the context of the politicization of civilizational worldviews. Ideologies of religious fundamentalism, such as political Islam, undermine cross-cultural bridging. A quest for a convergence of values is an alternative to conflict. In arguing for an education in democracy, I state the conflict and outline a solution for it. Clearly, if the traditional Islamic education were to prevail in the service of an Islamic revolt against the West... then there could be no scenario for cross-cultural bridging. The "revolt" against the West debate, and the collective memories revived with such a claim are in contrast to universal value systems and are not beneficial for the promotion of democracy, human rights and civil society. My fellow reform Muslim Abdullahi An-Na'im and I have engaged in projects establishing cross-cultural foundations for universal values and in reasoning about shari'a reforms. At issue is democratic value-change to overcome exclusive self-assertion through establishing cross-cultural, universally minded standards of cultural change. At issue also is dealing with the gap between the globalization of structures and the universalization of values, creating a simultaneity of the unsimultaneous that determines our age."

"The first of the universal factors, the purpose of teaching, has been considered to convince the teacher that in every lesson he should be conscious of the value of the experience produced in terms of the spiritual development of the child; that, for instance, in teaching a lesson in geography, the universal spiritual value of the lesson to the child should be the conscious guide in all that the teacher does; and that thus the utilitarian value of the subject will be more fully realized than if directly sought. In fact, the industrial end can furnish no guidance in the actual process of teaching. The universal value which the teacher is to feel, and by which he is to be guided, is in the experience produced, and not in something external and remote in time and application. The value is imminent in the experience itself; and is here and now and always to the pupil."

"Universal values are the values of the people of the world. Hence they should not be confused with imperial values or Western values. The state of diversity recognizes the uniqueness of communities, warning against unnecessary standardization of global life. The state of conflict arises when community practices violate universal values."

"It is good that the great tradition of Islam can add its contribution to the richness of American life. To the extent that the Muslims of America exemplify in their lives the Islamic ideals which you have stated here, of the supreme worth and dignity of every human being, brotherhood and love among all mankind, and the absolute equality of all persons before God, you will be strengthening in the American culture qualities that are greatly needed here, as they are in all the world. ...I have been going among my own religious fellowship... the Quakers, to suggest an outlook and a policy of action which, I believe, would help in the achievement of the ideals which you have embodied in the preamble to your constitution. It is because I believe that the attitudes and the actions I have suggested to my own religious fellowship are of universal value that I accepted the invitation of your representative to attend this meeting. ... With the great present-day movements and interrelations of mankind, isolation of faiths is no longer possible. Yet it still is true that the conviction of having the one true faith is inherently and inevitably among the chief causes of strife and of war. Christians, Muslims, Hindus alike, say, and really believe, that they want peace. There is something we can do about it. We can face the fact that there is no one and only true faith. The religions of men have been born in sincere efforts to find truth and value. That tradition of searching for the true and the good is the most priceless inheritance of mankind. But that search has been carried on by fallible men. Each faith has in it something that is true, and something that falls short of truth. If men of every faith can see themselves and their faiths as searching for the good and the true, if they can recognize their fallibility and can respect the sincerity and value of other faiths, then one kind of barrier between men will begin to crumble, and the brotherhood of man can be a greater reality. ...The truth we can know is larger than it used to be. ...the world as a whole will never be Christian or Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu. ...If we can see other faiths and our own as sincere though fallible searchings for the truth, if we can respect each other's faiths, and learn from them as well as from our own, then not only will world brotherhood grow, but a larger and more universal pattern of truth and goodness will begin to emerge."

"Just as Hillel's actions were not based (even in theory) on any reasoned ethical system, so his moral teaching did not take the form of a systematic treatise, but was expressed in aphorisms, which were, no doubt, occasioned by particular circumstances, but have none the less a universal value. This value, indeed, is not for the doubter, who must needs either find a rational basis for morality, or discard it. They appeal to those who accept, as Hillel accepted, the fundamental postulates of Judaism; and their claim to universality rests, therefore, on the extent to which those postulates are in accord with the root facts of human nature. They are interpretative, not speculative. The moral sayings of Hillel recorded in the Talmud are few in number, but they embody with sufficient fulness the point of view which was expressed no less fully in his conduct. They are contained almost exclusively in the first two chapters of the "Ethics of the Fathers.""

"Values contained in a universal treaty are universal values, since no value is placed in a universal treaty if too many nations dispute its legitimacy."