Capricious Quotes

• The mind is the most capricious of insects — flitting, fluttering.

  Virginia Woolf

  Mind, Fluttering, Insects

  Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.133, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A consistent soul believes in destiny, a capricious one in chance.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Believe, Intelligent, Destiny

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• Love is a capricious creature which desires everything and can be contented with almost nothing.

  Madeleine de Scudery

  Love Is, Desire, Creatures

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• Nothing is more unjust or capricious than public opinion.

  William Hazlitt

  Public Opinion, Unjust, Opinion

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1476, Delphi Classics

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• The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster cruel vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging three headed beast like god one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes fools and hypocrites.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Christian, Atheist, Hypocrite

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• Washington politicians basically view the People as a capricious and dangerous enemy, a dumb mob whose only interesting quality happens to be their power to take away politicians' jobs... When the government sees its people as the enemy, sooner or later that feeling gets to be mutual. And that's when the real weirdness begins.

  Matt Taibbi

  Jobs, Real, Government

  Matt Taibbi (2008). “The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire”, p.131, Spiegel & Grau

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• 

  Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  Benjamin Disraeli (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Benjamin Disraeli (Illustrated)”, p.4990, Delphi Classics

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• Oh, Fortuna, you capricious sprite!

  John Kennedy Toole

  Fortuna

  John Kennedy Toole (1987). “A Confederacy of Dunces”

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• I do not understand the capricious lewdness of the sleeping mind.

  John Cheever

  Dream, Sleep, Mind

  "Roget's Thesaurus of Words for Intellectuals". Book by David Olsen, Michelle Bevilacqua (p. 67), October 15, 2011.

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• From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

  Harry A. Blackmun

  Tinkering, Death Penalty, Human Rights

  Callins v.Collins (dissenting opinion) (1994)

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• As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.

  Jonathan Swift

  Love, Cold, Esteem

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• Einstein repeatedly argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer.

  Fred Brooks

  Comfort, Arbitrary, Amusing

  "No Silver Bullet". Book by Fred Brooks, 1986.

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• Life does not require us to be consistent, cruel, patient, helpful, angry, rational, thoughtless, loving, rash, open-minded, neurotic, careful, rigid, tolerant, wasteful, rich, downtrodden, gentle, sick, considerate, funny, stupid, healthy, greedy, beautiful, lazy, responsive, foolish, sharing, pressured, intimate, hedonistic, industrious, manipulative, insightful, capricious, wise, selfish, kind or sacrificed. Life does, however, require us to live with the consequences of our choices.

  Richard Bach

  Funny, Beautiful, Wise

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• How dare you? How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault? It's not right, it's utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain?

  Stephen Fry

  Pain, Stupid, Mean

  YouTube Chanel "Secular Talk"/ "Stephen Fry Annihilates God", www.youtube.com. January 31, 2015.

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• Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Order, Discipline, Demand

  1970 Stilwell and the American Experience in China, pt.1, ch.1.

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• There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Life, Nature

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• Any test that turns on what is offensive to the community's standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they don't like, provided the matter relates to "sexual impurity" or has a tendency "to excite lustful thoughts." This is community censorship in one of its worst forms. It creates a regime where, in the battle between the literati and the Philistines, the Philistines are certain to win.

  William O. Douglas

  Winning, Expression, Community

  "Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. June 24, 1957.

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• The desert is a capricious lady, and sometimes she drives men crazy.

  Paulo Coelho

  Crazy, Men, Desert

  Paulo Coelho (1998). “The Alchemist - 10th Anniversary Edition”, HarperSanFrancisco

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• The Greeks understood perfectly that if there were divine beings they are capricious, unkind, malicious mostly, temperamental, envious and mostly deeply unpleasant because that you can say well yes, all right, if there is going to be god or gods then you have to admit that they're very at the very least capricious. They're certainly not consistent. They're certainly not all loving.

  Stephen Fry

  Greek, Envious, Divine

  "The Importance of Unbelief". Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. December 8, 2009.

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• The Christian god is a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Christian, Character, Religion

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• The sadistic narcissist perceives himself as Godlike, ruthless and devoid of scruples, capricious and unfathomable, emotion-less and non-sexual, omniscient, omnipotent and omni-present, a plague, a devastation, an inescapable verdict.

  Sam Vaknin

  Devastation, Emotion, Narcissist

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• Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.

  Walter Bagehot

  Time, Wind, Law

  Walter Bagehot (1930). “The English Constitution: And Other Political Essays”, p.175, Lulu.com

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• Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate that the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself.

  Chinua Achebe

  Heart, Men, Okonkwo

  Chinua Achebe (1996). “Things Fall Apart”, p.9, Heinemann

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• Social science virtually abhors the event. Not without reason; the short-term is the most capricious and deceptive form of time.

  Fernand Braudel

  Events, Reason, Social

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• 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, Arbitrary, Death Penalty

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

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