Arbitrary Quotes - Page 16

• To plead the organic causation of a religious state of mind, then, in refutation of its claim to possess superior spiritual value, is quite illogical and arbitrary, unless one have already worked out in advance some psycho-physical theory connecting spiritual values in general with determinate sorts of physiological change. Otherwise none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our dis -beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every one of them without exception flows from the state of their possessor's body at the time.

  William James

  Spiritual, Religious, Feelings

  William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.14, Courier Corporation

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• It is because the cosmos is meaningless that we must secure our individual illusions of values, direction, and interest by upholding the artificial streams which give us such worlds of salutary illusion. That is - since nothing means anything in itself, we must preserve the proximate and arbitrary background which makes things around us seem as if they did mean something.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Mean, Giving, Cosmos

  Letter to James F. Morton (6 November 1930), in "Selected Letters III, 1929-1931" edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, (p. 208), 1968.

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• I am distinctly opposed to visibly arrogant and arbitrary extremes of government--but this is simply because I wish the safety of an artistic and intellectual civilisation to be secure, not because I have any sympathy with the coarse-grained herd who would menace the civilisation if not placated by sops.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Government, Safety, Intellectual

  H. P. Lovecraft (2010). “Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft”, p.105, Lulu.com

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• Every seemingly arbitrary destructive action is a reaction of the organism to the frustration of a gratification of a vital need, especially of a sexual need.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Frustration, Needs, Action

  Wilhelm Reich (1973). “The Discovery of the Orgone”

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• I believe that all of us have gangster proclivities and greedy orientations that need accountability. That's why democracies are necessary. We have to have institutions to try to curtail the use of arbitrary power so that our greedy orientations and gangster-like proclivities don't get out of hand.

  Cornel West

  Believe, Hands, Accountability

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The impulses of my heart are the voice of Nature, which is never mistaken. The institutions that stand in my way are man-made and are only arbitrary conventions to which I have never given my consent. In trampling these institutions underfoot, I shall have the double pleasure of satisfying my inclinations and of believing myself a hero

  Frederic Bastiat

  Believe, Hero, Heart

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• The transnational corporations and the money markets have declared the era of human-designed regulations over. Now the market must reign. Because few people in the business community are paid to think about phrases such as "Western civilization," they don't seem to realize that they are proposing the arbitrary denial of 2,500 years of human experience.

  John Ralston Saul

  Thinking, Years, Civilization

  "The Doubter's Companion". Book by John Ralston Saul, 1994.

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• I use color in a completely arbitrary way in order to express myself powerfully.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Order, Color, Use

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• Hard times are purposeful, meant to refine and redirect us. They're not arbitrary or random, and they're definitely not cruel.

  Liz Curtis Higgs

  Hard Times, Hard

  Liz Curtis Higgs (2012). “The Girl's Still Got It: Take a Walk with Ruth and the God Who Rocked Her World”, p.12, WaterBrook

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• There can be no compromise between freedom and government controls; to accept 'just a few controls' is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights and to substitute for it the principle of the government’s unlimited, arbitrary power, thus delivering oneself into gradual enslavement. As an example of this process, observe the present domestic policy of the United States.

  Ayn Rand

  Rights, Government, Principles

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.65, Penguin

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• We come now to the question: what is a priori certain or necessary, respectively in geometry (doctrine of space) or its foundations? Formerly we thought everything; nowadays we think nothing. Already the distance-concept is logically arbitrary; there need be no things that correspond to it, even approximately.

  Albert Einstein

  Distance, Math, Thinking

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• The first step is to measure whatever can easily be measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.

  Charles Handy

  Suicide, Giving, Risk

  Charles Handy (2011). “The Empty Raincoat: Making Sense of the Future”, p.219, Random House

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• Eternal vigilance must be maintained to guard against those who seek to stifle ideas, establish a narrow orthodoxy, and divide our nation along arbitrary lines of race, ethnicity, and religious belief or non-belief.

  Jesse Ventura

  Religious, Ethnicity, Ideas

  Jesse Ventura (2008). “Don't Start the Revolution Without Me!: From the Minnesota Governor's Mansion to the Baja Outback : Reflections and Revisionings”, Skyhorse Publishing Company Incorporated

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• Everybody who says the same words is the same person if the spectra are the same only they happen differently in time, you dig? But the time is arbitrary. You pick your zero point anywhere you want, that way you can shuffle each person's time line sideways till they all coincide.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Zero, Lines, Want

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “The Crying of Lot 49”, p.67, Penguin

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• I have seen the rise of fascism and communism. Both philosophies glorify the arbitrary power of the state... But both theories fail. Both deny those God-given liberties that are the inalienable right of each person on this planet, indeed, they deny the existence of God.

  Ronald Reagan

  Philosophy, Liberty, Failing

  United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan), Ronald Reagan (1982). “Ronald Reagan”

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• Independent of its connection with human destiny hereafter, the fate of republican government is indissolubly bound up with the fate of the Christian religion, and a people who reject its holy faith will find themselves the slaves of their own evil passions and of arbitrary power.

  Lewis Cass

  Christian, Passion, Independent

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• Carbon dioxide is natural, it is not harmful, it is a part of Earth's lifecycle. And yet we're being told that we have to reduce this natural substance, reduce the American standard of living, to create an arbitrary reduction in something that is naturally occurring in Earth.

  Michele Bachmann

  Environmental, Substance, Earth

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• No man can delegate,... any right of arbitrary dominion over a 3rd person; for that would imply a right in the 1st person, not only to make the 3rd person his slave, but also a right to dispose of him as a slave to still other persons. Any contract to do this is necessarily a criminal one...To call such a contract a “constitution” does not at all lessen its criminality, or add to its validity.

  Lysander Spooner

  Men, Criminals, Doe

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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, Amusing, Programming

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

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• Once you buy the argument that some segment of the citizenry should lose their rights, just because they are envied or resented, you are putting your own rights in jeopardy - quite aside from undermining any moral basis for respecting anybody's rights. You are opening the floodgates to arbitrary power. And once you open the floodgates, you can't tell the water where to go.

  Thomas Sowell

  Rights, Water, Moral

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• Arbitrary power has seldom... been introduced in any country at once. It must be introduced by slow degrees, and as it were step by step.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Country, Power, Degrees

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• ..where effective competition can be created, it is a better way of guiding individual efforts than any other... regards competition as superior not only because it is in most circumstances the most efficient method known but even more because it is the only method by which our activities can be adjusted to each other without coercive or arbitrary intervention of authority.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Individual Effort, Competition, Way

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• Sometimes a name seems our most arbitrary possession,
  and sometimes it seems like the grain in a rock
  like a sculptor's hunk of Italian marble: Whack it
  and you might get either your first glimpse of a saint
  or a pile of rubble.

  Lucia Perillo

  Italian, Rocks, Names

  Lucia Perillo (2012). “Inseminating the Elephant”, p.37, Copper Canyon Press

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• I’ve never agreed with the conventional wisdom that ‘actors are great liars.’ If more people understood the acting process, the goals of good actors, the conventional wisdom would be ‘actors are terrible liars,’ because only bad actors lie on the job. The good ones hate fakery and avoid manufactured emotion at all costs. Any script is enough of a lie anyway. (What experience does any actor have with flying a spacecraft? Killing someone?) What’s called for, what actors are hired for, is to bring reality to the arbitrary.

  Rob Lowe

  Jobs, Liars, Lying

  Rob Lowe (2011). “Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography”, p.107, Macmillan

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• When you have trouble with things—whether it's figuring out whether to push or pull a door or the arbitrary vagaries of the modern computer and electronics industries—it's not your fault. Don't blame yourself: blame the designer.

  Donald A. Norman

  Doors, Electronics, Faults

  "The Design of Everyday Things". Book by Donald Norman, Introduction to the 2002 Edition, p. x, 2002.

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