Arbitrary Quotes - Page 6

• For instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of colour to express myself more forcefully.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Color, Trying, Use

  "The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh".

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• Nothing whatever but the constitutional law, the political structure, of these United States protects any American from arbitrary seizure of his property and his person, from the Gestapo and the Storm Troops, from the concentration camp, the torture chamber, the revolver at the back of his neck in a cellar.

  Rose Wilder Lane

  Government, Law, Political

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• The power to determine the quantity of money... is too important, too pervasive, to be exercised by a few people, however public-spirited, if there is any feasible alternative. There is no need for such arbitrary power... Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes - excusable or not - can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic - this is the key political argument against an independent central bank.

  Milton Friedman

  Trust, Mistake, Independent

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• This, then, is freedom in the external life of man-that he is independent of the arbitrary power of his fellows.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Independent, Men, Liberty

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist”, p.168, VM eBooks

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• The crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to every imposition, that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use shall make us as tame and abject slaves, as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway.

  George Washington

  Rights, Use, Slavery

  George Washington, John Clement Fitzpatrick, David Maydole Matteson, United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission (1944). “The writings of George Washington from the original manuscript sources, 1745-1799: prepared under the direction of the United States George Washington bicentennial commission and published by authority of Congress”

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• There are several kinds of truths, and it is customary to place in the first order mathematical truths, which are, however, only truths of definition. These definitions rest upon simple, but abstract, suppositions, and all truths in this category are only constructed, but abstract, consequences of these definitions ... Physical truths, to the contrary, are in no way arbitrary, and do not depend on us.

  Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

  Truth, Simple, Order

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• If a being suffers there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that its suffering be counted equally with the like suffering - insofar as rough comparisons can be made - of any other being. So the limit of sentience is the only defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others. To mark this boundary by some other characteristic like intelligence or rationality would be to mark it in an arbitrary manner. Why not choose some other characteristic, like skin color?

  Peter Singer

  Animal, Skin Color, Suffering

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• If a single act of folly was more responsible for this explosion than any other it was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision that the Straits of Tiran would be closed. The right of innocent, maritime passage must be preserved for all nations

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  War, Decision, Would Be

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• Those who sniff decay in every shift of sense or alteration of usage do the language no service. Too often for such people the notion of good English has less to do with expressing ideas clearly than with making words conform to some arbitrary pattern.

  Bill Bryson

  Writing, Ideas, People

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• Imposition of the death penalty is arbitrary and capricious. Decision of who will live and who will die for his crime turns less on the nature of the offense and the incorrigibility of the offender and more on inappropriate and indefensible considerations: the political and personal inclinations of prosecutors; the defendant's wealth, race and intellect; the race and economic status of the victim; the quality of the defendant's counsel; and the resources allocated to defense lawyers.

  Gerald Heaney

  Race, Decision, Political

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• The practice of arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Practice, Democracy, Age

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2015). “The Federalist Papers: A Collection of Essays Written in Favour of the New Constitution”, p.418, Coventry House Publishing

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• Page after page of professional economic journals are filled with mathematical formulas leading the reader from sets of more or less plausible but entirely arbitrary assumptions to precisely stated but irrelevant theoretical conclusions.

  Wassily Leontief

  Pages, Assumption, Economics

  Wassily Leontief (1966). “Essays in Economics: Theories, Theorizing, Facts, and Policies”, p.10, Transaction Publishers

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• We move from more or less plausible but really arbitrary assumptions, to elegantly demonstrated but irrelevant conclusions.

  Wassily Leontief

  Moving, Assumption, Economics

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• For the other end of the spectrum, the 50 to 85 percent of the world's population who are not the recipients of privilege, the world they know is almost certainly worse than any their earlier counterparts knew. It is likely they are worse off materially, despite the technological changes. In substantive as opposed to formal terms, they are more, not less, subject to arbitrary constraints, since the central mechanisms are more pervasive and more efficient. And they bear the brunt of the various kinds of psychic malaise, as well as of the destructiveness of civil wars.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  War, Psychics, Technological Change

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• As I have said before, I never had any large respect for good spelling. That is my feeling yet. Before the spelling-book came with its arbitrary forms, men unconsciously revealed shades of their characters, and also added enlightening shades of expression to what they wrote by their spelling, and so it is possible that the spelling-book has been a doubtful benevolence to us.

  Mark Twain

  Respect, Book, Character

  Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.3759, GENERAL PRESS

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• In talking about human rights today, we are referring primarily to the following demands: protection of the individual against arbitrary infringement by other individuals or by the government; the right to work and to adequate earnings from work; freedom of discussion and teaching; adequate participation of the individual in the formation of his government. These human rights are nowadays recognised theoretically, although, by abundant use of formalistic, legal manoeuvres, they are being violated to a much greater extent than even a generation ago.

  Albert Einstein

  Teaching, Government, Talking

  Albert Einstein (2010). “Ideas And Opinions”, p.35, Broadway Books

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• We are fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed, in defiance of international good faith, by the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power.

  H. H. Asquith

  Strong, War, Fighting

  H. H. Asquith's Address to the House of Commons on the declaration of war with Germany, api.parliament.uk. August 6, 1914.

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• Real life this fdar had taught me that in the adult world, fate was chaotic and uncertain. Guidelines for success were arbitrary. But in the world of D&D, at least there was a rule book... By role-playing, we were in control, and our characters... wandered through places of danger, their destinies, ostensibly, within our grasp.

  Ethan Gilsdorf

  Real, Book, Character

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• It is irresponsible to set an arbitrary cap on how much therapy a Medicare beneficiary can receive. It ignores the health needs of our senior population - especially the oldest and sickest.

  John Ensign

  Senior, Population, Needs

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• And Nature takes no account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create, and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost.

  Kate Chopin

  Cost, Moral, Feels

  Kate Chopin (2016). “The Awakening”, p.151, Kate Chopin

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• A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: it must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.

  Stephen Hawking

  Class, Two, Elements

  "A Brief History Of Time: From Big Bang To Black Holes". Book by Stephen Hawking, 1988.

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• If the truth is boring, civilization is irksome. The constraints inherent in civilized living are frustrating in innumerable ways. Yet those with the vision of the anointed often see these constraints as only arbitrary impositions, things from which they-and we all-can be 'liberated.' The social disintegration which has followed in the wake of such liberation has seldom provoked any serious reconsideration of the whole set of assumptions-the vision-which led to such disasters. That vision is too well insulated from feedback.

  Thomas Sowell

  Civilization, Vision, Way

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• Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Government, Sight, Important

  John Maynard Keynes (2011). “Essays in Persuasion”, p.77, W. W. Norton & Company

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• There's something arbitrary about taking a picture. So I can stand at the edge of a highway and take one step forward and it can be a natural landscape untouched by man and I can take one step back and include a guardrail and change the meaning of the picture radically... I can take a picture of a person at one moment and make them look contemplative and photograph them two seconds later and make them look frivolous.

  Stephen Shore

  Photography, Art, Creativity

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• The resurrection is not an isolated supernatural oddity proving how powerful, if apparently arbitrary, God can be when he wants to. Nor is it at all a way of showing that there is indeed a heaven awaiting us after death. It is the decisive event demonstrating that God’s kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven.

  N. T. Wright

  Powerful, Oddities, Heaven

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