There is no absolute point of view from which real and ideal can be finally separated and labelled.
Absolute
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The fate of every democracy, of every government based on the sovereignty of the people, depends on the choices it makes between these opposite principles, absolute power on the one hand, and on the other the restraints of legality and the authority of tradition.
There is not much we can say with absolute confidence about the early church, but we can be fairly sure that the first Christians would not have dreamed of making a likeness of Jesus.
Beneath all differences of doctrine or discipline there exists a fundamental agreement as to the simple, absolute essentials in religion.
No one can live without relationship. You may withdraw into the mountains, become a monk, a sannyasi, wander off into the desert by yourself, but you are related. You cannot escape from that absolute fact. You cannot exist in isolation.
There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
A jealous lover of human liberty, deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.
Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.