Arbitrary Quotes - Page 2

• Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

  George Ryan

  Illinois, Death Penalty, Penalties

  "Illinois Death Row Emptied". www.washingtonpost.com. January 12, 2003.

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• Designs of purely arbitrary nature cannot be expected to last long.

  Kenzo Tange

  Long, Design, Lasts

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• [I]f vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established.

  Algernon Sidney

  Liberty, Vices, Corruption

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• Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Liberty, Libertarian

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.69, Knopf

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• Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.

  John Quincy Adams

  Power, People, Liberty

  "Novanglus or A History of the Dispute with America, From Its Origin in 1754 to the Present Time (Essay No. 3)". Essays by John Quincy Adams, first published in the Boston Gazette, 1774-1775.

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• Neither dead nor alive, the hostage is suspended by an incalculable outcome. It is not his destiny that awaits for him, nor his own death, but anonymous chance, which can only seem to him something absolutely arbitrary. He is in a state of radical emergency, of virtual extermination.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Destiny, Alive, Outcomes

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• Standards of beauty are arbitrary. Body shame exists only to the extent that our physiques don't match our own beliefs about how we should look.

  Martha Beck

  Looks, Body, Belief

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• The laws and conditions of the production of wealth partake of the character of physical truths. There is nothing optional or arbitrary in them ... It is not so with the Distribution of Wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely. The things once there, mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they like.

  John Stuart Mill

  Truth, Character, Science

  John Stuart Mill “Principles of Political Economy: Abridged with Critical, Bibliographical and Explanatory Notes and a Sketch of the History of Political Economy”, Library of Alexandria

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• Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, and one more safeguard against tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Gun, America, Government

  "Know Your Lawmaker". Guns magazine, p. 4, February 1960.

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• A sort of war of revenge on the intellect is what, for some reason, thrives in the contemporary social atmosphereThe ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom explicit. They are utilitarian and political, the instruments of smooth-running government.

  Wyndham Lewis

  Running, Revenge, War

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• According to scholars of linguistics, the relation between a word and its meaning is arbitrary.

  Roy Blount, Jr.

  Relation, Scholar, Linguistics

  Roy Blount, Jr. (2009). “Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory”, p.10, Macmillan

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• But in the present century, thanks in good part to the influence of Hilbert, we have come to see that the unproved postulates with which we start are purely arbitrary. They must be consistent, they had better lead to something interesting.

  Julian Coolidge

  Interesting, Thanks, Influence

  Julian Lowell Coolidge (2013). “A History of Geometrical Methods”, p.423, Courier Corporation

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• You hear a lot about God these days: God, the beneficent; God, the all-great; God, the Almighty; God, the most powerful; God, the giver of life; God, the creator of death. I mean, we're hearing about God all the time, so we better learn how to deal with it. But if we know anything about God, God is arbitrary.

  Bob Dylan

  Powerful, Mean, Hearing

  Bob Dylan (2007). “Dylan on Dylan: The Essential Interviews”, Hodder & Stoughton

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• A government that can at pleasure accuse, shoot, and hang men, as traitors, for the one general offence of refusing to surrender themselves and their property unreservedly to its arbitrary will, can practice any and all special and particular oppressions it pleases.

  Lysander Spooner

  Men, Practice, Special

  Lysander Spooner (1867). “No Treason: No. 1-”, p.15

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• The ideas of a time are like the clothes of a season: they are as arbitrary, as much imposed by some superior will which is seldom explicit.

  Wyndham Lewis

  Ideas, Clothes, Explicit

  Wyndham Lewis (1969). “Wyndham Lewis: an anthology of his prose”

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• The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny; flattery to treachery; standing armies to arbitrary government; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.

  David Hume

  Army, Government, Patriotism

  Adam Ferguson, David Hume, David R. Raynor (1982). “Sister Peg: A Pamphlet Hitherto Unknown by David Hume”, p.19, Cambridge University Press

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• "Pieces" almost always appear 'as parts' in whole processes. ... To sever a "'part" from the organized whole in which it occurs-whether it itself be a subsidiary whole or an "element"-is a very real process usually involving alterations in that "part". Modifications of a part frequently involve changes elsewhere in the whole itself. Nor is the nature of these alterations arbitrary, for they too are determined by whole-conditions.

  Max Wertheimer

  Change, Nature, Real

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• Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Liberty, Libertarian

  "Minority Report".

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• I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons and Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.

  William Blake

  Wise, Hurt, Sorry

  William Blake (1988). “William Blake”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Gun, America, Government

  "Know Your Lawmaker". Guns magazine, p. 4, February 1960.

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• How on earth can religious people believe in so much arbitrary, clearly invented balderdash?....The acceptance of a creed, any creed, entitles the acceptor to membership in the sort of artificial extended family we call a congregation. It is a way to fight loneliness. Any time I see a person fleeing from reason and into religion, I think to myself, There goes a person who simply cannot stand being so goddamned lonely anymore.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Lonely, Religious, Loneliness

  Kurt Vonnegut (1982). “Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage”, Dell Books

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• To divide one's life by years is of course to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic. The calendar consents to carry on its dull wall-existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth and Sun. But we, unlike trees, need grow no annual rings.

  Clifton Fadiman

  Birthday, Wall, Years

  Clifton Fadiman (1955). “Party of One: The Selectd Writings of Clifton Fadiman”

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• A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit.... A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.

  Vaclav Havel

  Lying, Exercise, Rights

  "Living in Truth". Book by Vaclav Havel, 1986.

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• Considered logically this concept is not identical with the totality of sense impressions referred to; but it is an arbitrary creation of the human (or animal) mind.

  Albert Einstein

  Animal, Perception, Mind

  Albert Einstein (2016). “The Albert Einstein Collection: Essays in Humanism, The Theory of Relativity, and The World As I See It”, p.116, Open Road Media

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• That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.

  James Madison

  Men, Class, Safety

  James Madison (1865). “Letters and other writings of James Madison”, p.479

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