Arbitrary Quotes - Page 11

• Everything has a reason, including the selection of the photos, which was not arbitrary but appropriate to the period, its highs and lows and my sense of them.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Painting, Reason

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• No genuine choice is ever simply a matter of the arbitrary exercise of will. Take your choice of lunch today. You can't decide to want anything, but what you want will at least in part be a result of a series of other choices and judgments you've made in your life to date.

  Julian Baggini

  Exercise, Lunch, Choices

  "Choice is rarely black and white" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. August 02, 2010.

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• I've decided I don't want to be a manager. Every time you try to be responsive to your employees, they say you're being reactive and not proactive. And when you try to be proactive, they accuse you of being capricious and arbitrary. So I don't wanna be a manager.

  Larry Wall

  Trying, Want, Computer

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• What shouldn't you do if you're a young playwright? Don't bore the audience! I mean, even if you have to resort to totally arbitrary killing on stage, or pointless gunfire, at least it'll catch their attention and keep them awake. Just keep the thing going any way you can.

  Tennessee Williams

  Mean, Writing, Attention

  Tennessee Williams, Albert J. Devlin (1986). “Conversations with Tennessee Williams”, Univ Pr of Mississippi

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• Terrorists can endanger some of us, but the war on terror endangers us all. How much more can the Constitution be diminished before it is completely replaced by arbitrary government power?

  Paul Craig Roberts

  War, Government, Constitution

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• If you don't believe there's some organising principle, or somebody up in the sky pulling the strings, then it can be very stressful. And nature itself is very arbitrary - it's not malevolent or benevolent; it doesn't even know we're here.

  Michael Shannon

  Believe, Sky, Principles

  "Michael Shannon: 'I'm not trying to exorcise any demons'" by Catherine Shoard, www.theguardian.com. November 30, 2011.

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• Our work on light bulbs wasn't an arbitrary mandate. We didn't just pick a standard out of the air, or look for a catchy sounding standard like 25 by 2025 not based in science or feasibility. Instead, we worked with both industry and environmental groups to come up with a standard that made sense and was doable.

  Fred Upton

  Light, Air, Environmental

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• Life has no meaning. It doesn't need a meaning. A meaning is an arbitrary thought formulation that we affix to it because we are in the mood. Life is its own raison d'etre.

  Frederick Lenz

  Inspirational, Buddhism, Needs

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• A part of us resists all of this and wants to make it sound as if it's much too religious, an arbitrary thing that we have to do with our life. This is nonsense. This is the real fun.

  Frederick Lenz

  Inspirational, Religious, Fun

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• I wanted to dismantle the bollocks that there's a military structure to a gang, with a leader, second leader, the good looking one, first babe, second babe. It's far more arbitrary than that and their values shouldn't be romanticised. They aren't something you want to sign up to.

  Peter Mullan

  Military, Leader, Want

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• Grammar is not a set of arbitrary rules; it is a compact between people who wish to understand each other.

  Robert Breault

  People, Wish, Grammar

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• Let us make an arbitrary decision (by a show of hands if necessary) to define the base of every stratigraphical unit in a selected section. This may be called the "Principle of the Golden Spike." Then stratigraphical nomenclature can be forgotten and we can get on with the real work of stratigraphy, which is correlation and interpretation.

  D. V. Ager

  Real, Science, Hands

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• What causes adolescents to rebel is not the assertion of authority but the arbitrary use of power, with little explanation of the rules and no involvement in the decision-making.

  Laurence Steinberg

  Father, Decision, Rebel

  Laurence Steinberg (2011). “You and Your Adolescent, New and Revised edition: The Essential Guide for Ages 10-25”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

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• If these precedents are to stand unimpeached, and to provide sanctions for the continued conduct of America affairs-the Constitution may be nullified by the President and officers who have taken the oath and are under moral obligation to uphold it....they may substitute personal and arbitrary government-the first principle of the totalitarian system against which it has been alleged that World War II was waged-while giving lip service to the principle of constitutional government.

  Charles A. Beard

  War, Taken, America

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• We are deeply concerned about the situation in Russia with regards to human rights. There are several examples of this situation, such as the new law requiring NGOs to register as "foreign agents", the law banning homosexual "propaganda", problems with the rule of law and arbitrary judicial processes, and court rulings against the opposition.

  Cecilia Malmstrom

  Law, Russia, Rights

  "Situation in Russia". Personal blog at the European Commission website, ec.europa.eu. January 17, 2014.

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• The Truth is not Arbitrary or a Matter of Opinion, but can be Investigated, and Those who Earnestly Search for the Truth will Find It. The Truth is Hidden to the Blind, but he who has the Mental Eye Sees the Truth.

  Gautama Buddha

  Eye, Matter, Opinion

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• The atmosphere of fear and security manipulated by the government has converted American citizens into terrorist suspects who are all subject to arbitrary and unreviewable detention and surveillance.

  Richard A. Falk

  Government, Atmosphere, Citizens

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• We should try to achieve things for ourselves and not rely on former or past family glories with which we have no connection but the arbitrary nature of our birth.

  Shirley Franklin

  Past, Trying, Connections

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• [E]very man, everywhere, should be free to develop his talents to their full potential - unhampered by arbitrary barriers of race or birth or income.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Education, Money, Men

  Johnson, Lyndon B. (1970). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968-1969”, p.172, Best Books on

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• One must first seek to love plants and nature, and then to cultivate that happy peace of mind which is satisfied with little. He will be happier if he has no rigid and arbitrary ideals, for gardens are coquettish, particularly with the novice.

  Liberty Hyde Bailey

  Garden, Simplicity, Mind

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• The hypothesis is pretty; its only fault is that it is neither demonstrated nor demonstrable. Who does not see that this is purely arbitrary fiction that puts nothingness as existing and proposes nothing more than simple noncontradiciton?

  Galileo Galilei

  Simple, Thinking, Doe

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• The common view of marriage as a primitive institution implies in the man more than arbitrary superiority, such as he exercised over the child, which still remained free. The woman's slavery was assumed to be for life.

  Henry Adams

  Marriage, Children, Men

  Henry Adams (1973). “Historical Essays”, p.1, Georg Olms Verlag

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• A recent poll showed that nearly half the American public believes that the government should redistribute wealth. That so many people are so willing to blithely put such an enormous and dangerous arbitrary power in the hands of politicians-\-\risking their own freedom, in hopes of getting what someone else has-\-\is a painful sign of how far many citizens and voters fall short of what is needed to preserve a democratic republic

  Thomas Sowell

  Believe, Fall, Government

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• It is the wicked deception of love that it begins by making us dwell not upon a woman in the outside world but upon a doll inside our head, the only woman who is always available in fact, the only one we shall ever possess, whom the arbitrary nature of memory, almost as absolute as that of the imagination, may have made as different from the real woman as the real Balbec had been from the Balbec I imagined- a dummy creation that little by little, to our own detriment, we shall force the real woman to resemble.

  Marcel Proust

  Memories, Real, Imagination

  Marcel Proust, Christopher Prendergast (2004). “The Guermantes Way”, Viking Press

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• We cannot by a little verbal sophistry confound the qualities of different minds, nor force opposite excellences into a union by all the intolerance in the world. If we have a taste for some one precise style or manner, we may keep it to ourselves and let others have theirs. If we are more catholic in our notions, and want variety of excellence and beauty, it is spread abroad for us to profusion in the variety of books and in the several growth of men's minds, fettered by no capricious or arbitrary rules.

  William Hazlitt

  Book, Men, Opposites

  "Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners". Book by William Hazlitt. Chapter: "On Criticism", 1822.

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