We are not perfect, you and I. We are human, and there has never been a perfect human. No, in my opinion, not even that one.
“Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.” ~ Salvador Dalí
It is impossible to find a flawless source of wisdom. As a Unitarian Universalist, I reject the very idea that humanity has found a perfect truth. Knowledge is constantly being revealed, and that revelation will likely never cease. We must come to understand that every prophetic voice, every person of science, every sage is a person with limits and flaws. The wisest wisdom that survives from 200 years ago had to survive a world that was more segregated, more bigoted, and even more ignorant, and so our culture is built on the imperfect words of sometimes horribly flawed innovators.
On our page, we share quotes from flawed people regularly. People like Mahatma Gandhi, whose wisdom on nonviolence is almost universally celebrated, but who had questionable views on gender and caste roles. Martin Luther King Jr, appropriately well regarded for his oratory and organizing skills, apparently plagiarized sections of his dissertation at Boston University.
Universalist PT Barnum, who was an impassioned advocate of African-American equality and voting rights, but also exploited humans and animals in ways we rightly condemn today. But, he was right about a lot of human behavior, and it would be folly to ignore that. We will continue, albeit rarely, to share quotes from the likes of Billy Graham, with whom we agree about very little, but who knew a great deal about motivating people and running a church that has the power to manifest its vision.
Our own religious tradition is far from spotless in regards to professional scandal, and we regularly make changes in how we acknowledge and address such things. It is good that we remember the humanity of our heroes and our cultural opponents alike and look for points of agreement where they exist.
Likewise, each quote, no matter how perfect it seems in its own time, could be rooted in ignorance or some form of discrimination we are not aware of. As we continue to share quotes that use dated, sexist, or exclusionary language, and refuse to “fix them”, please understand that this is out of a need to acknowledge the pain our fore-bearers caused, and the pain they endured; our heritage is not cleanly on only the right side of history. We will not cover the fact that our tradition is built on the works of enslavers and the enslaved. Our forebears were both suffragists and those who opposed equality. We will not hide from the fact that every person knew something we can learn from. Or that every person had traits which we should not celebrate. Every person has inherent value, but none of them is perfect from every angle. We will call it out when necessary, but we will not hide from the past, and if we think a quote is worth sharing, it will be shared in its original form (or the best English translation of it that we can find). And there are ideas that we love that were said in ways we refused to share! Those inspire us to write a modern and inclusive version, but we don’t have time to translate every work.
Part of the growing tradition of Unitarian Universalism is recognizing the flawed history of the human race; recognizing that we are on a long and winding path. The justice we fight for is not a decades-long struggle, but one spanning millennia. We can draw wisdom from flawed sources, seeing that these were each a small victory in the larger fight. Let’s remember that we cannot know how our best and brightest will be remembered a hundred years from now.
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