Arbitrary Quotes - Page 13

• 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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• 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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• Finally it should be the earnest wish and paramount aim of the military administration to win the confidence, respect, and affection of the inhabitants of the Philippines by assuring them in every possible way that full measure of individual rights and liberties which is the heritage of free peoples, and by proving to them that the mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule.

  William McKinley

  Military, Winning, Rights

  McKinley's Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation, December 21, 1898.

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• Or is it your reputation that's bothering you? But look at how soon we're all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of those applauding hands. The people who praise us; how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region it takes place. The whole earth a point in space - and most of it uninhabited.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Bothering You, Endless Time, Hands

  Marcus Aurelius (2002). “Meditations: A New Translation”, p.38, Modern Library

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• All colours are arbitrary.

  Carl Sagan

  Colour

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• For half of the world's population, roughly three billion people around the world living on less than two dollars a day, an election is at best a means, not an end; a starting point, not deliverance. These people are looking less for an "electocracy" than for the basic elements that for most of us define a decent life--food, shelter, electricity, basic health care, education for their children, and the ability to make their way through life without having to endure corruption, violence, or arbitrary power.

  Barack Obama

  Children, Mean, Two

  Barack Obama (2007). “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream”, p.317, Canongate Books

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• To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages today that determine success--the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history--with a society that provides opportunities for all.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Opportunity, Today, Happy Accidents

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• I don't expect Christians to see God as a metaphor, but that's what he is. Perhaps it might be clearer to call him a character in fiction, and a very interesting one too: one of the greatest and most complex villains of all - savage, petty, boastful and jealous, and yet capable of moments of tenderness and extremes of arbitrary affection - for David, for example. But he's not real, any more than Hamlet or Mr Pickwick are real. They are real in the context of their stories, but you won't find them in the phone book.

  Philip Pullman

  Christian, Real, Book

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• I no longer see Descartes' statement as arbitrary. It is representative of our culture's narcissism. This narcissism leads to a disturbing disrespect for direct experience and a negation of the body.

  Derrick Jensen

  Disrespect, Culture, Body

  Derrick Jensen (2012). “The Derrick Jensen Reader: Writings on Environmental Revolution”, p.19, Seven Stories Press

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• Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves.

  Dan Brown

  Faith, Religious, Jesus

  Dan Brown (2009). “Angels & Demons - Movie Tie-In: A Novel”, p.93, Simon and Schuster

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• Under budgetary pressure (arbitrary or not) it is truly remarkable how many options one discovers one can do without.

  James R. Schlesinger

  Pressure, Remarkable, Can Do

  James R. Schlesinger (1968). “Planning-programming-budgeting: Uses and Abuses of Analysis”

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• Panentheistic doctrine contains all of deism and pandeism except their arbitrary negations.

  Charles Hartshorne

  Doctrine, Deism, Negation

  "Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism" by Charles Hartshorne, (p. 348), 1941.

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• Like fanning through a deck of cards, my mind flashes on the thousand chances, trivial to profound, that converged to re-create this place. Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different. Where did the expression "a place in the sun" first come from? My rational thought process cling always to the idea of free will, random event; my blood, however, streams easily along a current of fate.

  Frances Mayes

  Fate, Expression, Blood

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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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• The custom and fashion of today will be the awkwardness and outrage of tomorrow - so arbitrary are these transient laws.

  Alexandre Dumas

  Fashion, Law, Awkward

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Abstract understanding doesn't mean arbitrary sloshing and messing. Abstract art is controlled visual magic based on laws and methodology. Abstraction generally involves implication, suggestion and mystery rather that obvious description. Like a good poem, a good abstraction attacks your feelings before your understanding. Abstraction within realism adds zest and excitement to otherwise dull subject matter. Abstract understanding takes time and patience.

  Robert Genn

  Art, Mean, Zest

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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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• 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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• The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or limited sovereignty, or absolute power is the same [whether] in a majority of a popular assembly; an aristocratic council; or oligarchical junto and a single emperor - equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody and in every respect diabolical.

  John Adams

  Political, Fundamentals, Majority

  John Adams' Letter to Thomas Jefferson, founders.archives.gov. November 13, 1815.

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• Art is arbitrary but it sort of reveals itself to be right or wrong anyway.

  Regina Spektor

  Art, Art Is

  Source: www.harpersbazaar.com

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• It's just strange to think that so much of our enjoyment from sports comes from the elevation of arbitrary differences.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Sports, Thinking, Differences

  "Usain Bolt, a Collapse, and an Epic Beer Mile". Interview with Nicholas Thompson, www.newyorker.com. August 27, 2015.

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