Arbitrary Quotes - Page 8

• [C]ensorship in any form is the opening wedge for fascism, since it places arbitrary and unwarranted power in the hands of individuals.

  Jack Parsons

  Freedom, Power, Hands

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• Will robot teachers replace human teachers? No, but they can complement them. Moreover, the could be sufficient in situations where there is no alternative––to enable learning while traveling, or while in remote locations, or when one wishes to study a topic for which there is not easy access to teachers. Robot teachers will help make lifelong learning a practicality. They can make it possible to learn no matter where one is in the world, no matter the time of day. Learning should take place when it is needed, when the learner is interested, not according to some arbitrary, fixed schedule

  Donald A. Norman

  Teacher, Wish, Robots

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• For there have risen many who have given to the plain words of Holy Writ some arbitrary interpretation of their own, instead of its true and only sense, and this in defiance of the clear meaning of words. Heresy lies in the sense assigned, not in the word written; the guilt is that of the expositor, not of the text.

  Hilary of Poitiers

  Lying, Guilt, Holy

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• Inflation is the fiscal complement of statism and arbitrary government. It is a cog in the complex of policies and institutions which gradually lead toward totalitarianism .

  Ludwig von Mises

  Government, Cogs, Institutions

  Ludwig von Mises (2013). “The Theory of Money and Credit”, p.428, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Memory is a capricious and arbitrary creature. You never can tell what pebble she will pick up from the shore of life to keep among her treasures, or what inconspicuous flower of the field she will preserve as the symbol of "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." . . . And yet I do not doubt that the most Important things are always the best remembered.

  Henry Van Dyke

  Life, Memories, Lying

  Henry Van Dyke (2015). “Little Rivers”, p.68, eKitap Projesi

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• From the first dawn of life, all organic beings are found to resemble each other in descending degrees, so that they can be classed in groups under groups. This classification is evidently not arbitrary like the grouping of stars in constellations.

  Charles Darwin

  Inspirational, Life, Stars

  Charles Darwin (1861). “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; Or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, p.358

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• History, is made up of the bad actions of extraordinary men and woman. All the most noted destroyers and deceivers of our species, all the founders of arbitrary governments and false religions have been extraordinary people; and nine tenths of the calamities that have befallen the human race had no other origin than the union of high intelligence with low desires.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Men, Race, People

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• I have lived with my husband more than I have with my parents... I live beside him, and know his worries, his hopes, and his dreams for his nation. We believe that things happen by design, not in an arbitrary way. And we believe it is our duty to make things happen.

  Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned

  Dream, Husband, Believe

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• By today's standards King George III was a very mild tyrant indeed. He taxed his American colonists at a rate of only pennies per annum. His actual impact on their personal lives was trivial. He had arbitrary power over them in law and in principle but in fact it was seldom exercised. If you compare his rule with that of today's U.S. Government you have to wonder why we celebrate our independence.

  Joseph Sobran

  Kings, Impact, Government

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• I think there are very few invisible musical instrument players out there who can claim the chops and sheer perseverance of Björn Türoque, the world's perennial second-place air guitar champion. Whoever this Dan Crane might be, he's captured the mad, seductive spirit of the arbitrary skill contest perfectly, and rocks it hard into the hot Finnish night. There is no number of umlauts that do this Jekyll and Hyde of air-rocking justice.

  John Hodgman

  Perseverance, Player, Night

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• The issue isn't gun control but state control -- obtuse and arbitrary state control, state control run amok. ... Forget guns. If Dr. Hudson, Mr. Turnbull, Dr. Gingrich and others end up in jail it won't be for their guns but our liberties.

  George Jonas

  Running, Gun, Jail

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• The line we draw between animals that are socially acceptable and those we find repugnant can be awfully arbitrary.

  Alexandra Harney

  Animal, Lines, Draws

  "A Love Story About... A Rat Named Mr. Tiffany" by Alexandra Harney, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 9, 2013.

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• What is time? The shadow on the dial, the striking of the clock, the running of the sand, day and night, summer and winter, months, years, centuries-these are but arbitrary and outward signs, the measure of Time, not Time itself. Time is the Life of the Soul.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Inspirational, Summer, Running

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1854). “The Works of Henry W. Longfellow”

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• To create a community of radical scholars, men and women who recognize that rules and social conventions are arbitrary, but have mastered them nonetheless, a community which shares such a scorn and disrespect for the present society that it can embrace the whole bundle of rules and subvert them thereby, that should be our goal.

  Howard Adelman

  Men, Goal, Community

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• Like other discriminatory legislation in our country's history, immigration laws define and differentiate legal status on the basis of arbitrary attributes. Immigration laws create unequal rights. People who break immigration laws don't cause harm or even potential harm (unlike, for example, drunk driving, which creates the potential for harm even if no accident occurs). Rather, people who break immigration laws do things that are perfectly legal for others, but denied to them--like crossing a border or, even more commonly, simply exist.

  Aviva Chomsky

  Country, Rights, Law

  Aviva Chomsky (2007). “They Take Our Jobs!: And 20 Other Myths about Immigration”, p.184, Beacon Press

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• The score must govern the music. It must have authority, and not merely be an arbitrary jumping-off point for improvisation.

  Cornelius Cardew

  Jumping, Authority, Score

  Cornelius Cardew, Richard Barrett (2006). “Cornelius Cardew: A Reader”

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• No language is as depending on arbitrary use and custom can ever be permanently the same, but will always be in a mutable and fluctuating state; and what is deem'd polite and elegant in one age, may be accounted uncouth and barbarous in another.

  Benjamin Martin

  Age, Use, May

  Benjamin Martin (1749). “Lingua Britannica Reformata: Or, a New English Dictionary, Under the Following Titles, Viz. I. Universal; ... VIII. Philosophical; ... To which is Prefix'd, an Introduction, Containing a Physico-grammatical Essay on the Propriety and Rationale of the English Tongue, ... By Benj. Martin”, p.482

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• No matter what any of the grammar teachers say, punctuation is an arbitrary matter. It should be used to make sentences clear.

  Andy Rooney

  Teacher, Matter, Punctuation

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• I removed the freeway from its temporal context. Overpasses, cloverleafs, exit ramps took on the personality of Mayan ruins for me. Without destination, without cessation, my run was often silent and empty; there were no increments, no arbitrary graduations reducing time to functional units. I abstracted and purified.

  Tom Robbins

  Running, Personality, Ruins

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• Emotional and psychological pain were to become, perhaps, the most powerful force in molding the course of my life. For some people, pain and hurt breed bitterness and cynicism. For others it causes them to look deeply into themselves and into life itself in an attempt to understand the meaning beneath seemingly capricious or arbitrary happenings.

  Joseph Girzone

  Hurt, Pain, Powerful

  Joseph F. Girzone (1994). “Never Alone: A Personal Way to God”, Doubleday Books

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• Indeed, there is nothing more arbitrary than intervening as a stranger in a destiny which is not ours.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Destiny, Existential, Stranger

  Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre (2016). “The Philosophical Library Existentialism Collection: Essays in Metaphysics, The Ethics of Ambiguity, and The Philosophy of Existentialism”, p.99, Open Road Media

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• At times, in medicine, you feel you are inside a colossal and impossibly complex machine whose gears will turn for you only according to their own arbitrary rhythm. The notion that human caring, the effort to do better for people, might make a difference can seem hopelessly naive. But it isn't.

  Atul Gawande

  Caring, Medicine, Differences

  Atul Gawande (2010). “Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance”, p.10, Profile Books

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• The first colour charts were unsystematic. They were based directly on commercial colour samples. They were still related to Pop Art. In the canvases that followed, the colours were chosen arbitrarily and drawn by chance. Then, 180 tones were mixed according to a given system and drawn by chance to make four variations of 180 tones. But after that the number 180 seemed too arbitrary to me, so I developed a system based on a number of rigorously defined tones and proportions.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Numbers, Variation

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• I began in 1976, with small abstract paintings that allowed me to do what I had never let myself do: put something down at random. And then, of course, I realized that it never can be random. It was all a way of opening a door for me. If I don't know what's coming - that is, if I have no hard-and-fast image, as I have with a photographic original - then arbitrary choice and chance play an important part.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Doors, Play

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007”, Distributed Art Pub Inc

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• 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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