Arbitrary Quotes - Page 18

• Any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.

  Herman Melville

  Men, Catholic, Mind

  Herman Melville (1963). “Works: Billy Budd, and other prose pieces, edited by R. W. Weaver”

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• The grand principles of virtue and honor, however they may be distorted by arbitrary codes, are the same the world over: and wherethese principles are concerned, the right or wrong of any action appears the same to the uncultivated as to the enlightened mind.

  Herman Melville

  Honor, Mind, Principles

  Herman Melville (1968). “Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life”, p.201, Northwestern University Press

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• That reality is 'independent' means that there is something in every experience that escapes our arbitrary control. If it be a sensible experience it coerces our attention; if a sequence, we cannot invert it; if we compare two terms we can come to only one result. There is a push, an urgency, within our very experience, against which we are on the whole powerless, and which drives us in a direction that is the destiny of our belief.

  William James

  Independent, Mean, Reality

  William James (2015). “The Meaning of Truth: Human Understanding”, p.27, 谷月社

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• Pity on the person who has become accustomed to seeing in necessity something arbitrary, who ascribes to the arbitrary some sort of reason, and even claims that following that sort of reason has religious value.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Religious, Chance, Pity

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• Languages exist by arbitrary institutions and conventions among peoples; words, as the dialecticians tell us, do not signify naturally, but at our pleasure.

  Francois Rabelais

  Language, Pleasure, Institutions

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• Although other animals cannot reason nor speak the way humans do, this does not give us the right to do with them as we like. Even though our supposed possession of a soul and superior intelligence are used to create an arbitrary dividing line over rights, the fact remains that all animals have the capacity to experience pain and suffering, and in suffering they are our equals.

  Nathaniel Altman

  Pain, Animal, Rights

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• There is something so arbitrary about prizes.

  Steve Toltz

  Prize

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• I make a distinction between manners and etiquette - manners as the principles, which are eternal and universal, etiquette as the particular rules which are arbitrary and different in different times, different situations, different cultures.

  Judith Martin

  Principles, Different, Culture

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• All of our punishment institutions, including jails, laws, church confessionals, and so forth, are systems of illusion. The order of the universe, the infinite justice of yin and yang, naturally takes care of all motion and compensation. We don't need to invent arbitrary ways to make balance with punishments.

  Michio Kushi

  Order, Law, Punishment

  "Spiritual Journey: Michio Kushi's Guide to Endless Self-Realization and Freedom". Book by Michio Kushi and Edward Esko (p. 57), December 1994.

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• I read things like theology, and I read about science, Scientific American and publications like that, because they stimulate again and again my sense of the almost arbitrary given-ness of experience, the fact that nothing can be taken for granted.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Taken, Facts, Granted

  "Marilynne Robinson Extended Interview". Interview with Bob Abernethy, www.pbs.org. September 18, 2009.

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• Valuation is vague and arbitrary, when there is no assurance that it will be generally acquiesced in by others.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Assurance, Valuation, Vague

  Jean Baptiste Say (1827). “A treatise on political economy: or, The production, distribution and consumption of wealth”, p.236

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• In times of political confusion, and under an arbitrary government, many will prefer to keep their capital inactive, concealed, and unproductive, either of profit or gratification, rather than run the risk of its display. This latter evil is never felt under a good government.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Running, Government, Evil

  Jean Baptiste Say, Charles Robert Prinsep (1857). “A Treatise on Political Economy; Or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth”, p.389

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• One sees a trend in our political and legal cultures toward treating religious beliefs as arbitrary and unimportant, a trend supported by a rhetoric that implies that there is something wrong with religious devotion.

  Stephen L. Carter

  Christian, Religious, Political

  Stephen L. Carter (1993). “The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion”, Basic Books

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• King is a title which translated into several languages, signifies a magistrate with as many different degrees of power as there are kingdoms in the world, and he can have no power but what is given him by law; yea, even the supreme or legislative power is bound by the rules of equity, to govern by laws enacted, and published in due form; for what is not legal is arbitrary.

  John Arbuthnot

  Kings, Law, World

  John Arbuthnot (1751). “A Supplement to the Miscellaneous Works of the Late Dr. Arbuthnot”, p.9

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• When man deploys the arbitrary nature of his madness, he confronts the dark necessity of the world; the animal that haunts his nightmares and his nights of privation is his own nature, which will lay bare hell's pitiless truth.

  Michel Foucault

  Dark, Night, Men

  Michel Foucault (2001). “Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason”, p.20, Psychology Press

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• All the proliferating falsifications of what I and everyone I know experienced once in what it is now so convenient to call the "fifties" or "sixties," as if life was really measured or lived in arbitrary decades, when the history books are sold like comix.

  Lester Bangs

  Book, Falsification, Convenient

  Lester Bangs (2013). “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll”, p.442, Anchor

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• National socialism is the determination to create a new man. There will no longer exist any individual arbitrary will, nor realms in which the individual belongs to himself. The time of happiness as a private matter is over.

  Adolf Hitler

  Determination, Men, Matter

  "Hitler". Book by Joachim C. Fest, p. 533, 1974.

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• The truest and greatest Poetry, (while subtly and necessarily always rhythmic, and distinguishable easily enough) can never again, in the English language, be express'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion.

  Walt Whitman

  Passion, Rhyming, Language

  Walt Whitman (2012). “Specimen Days & Collect”, p.323, Courier Corporation

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• Songwriting requires some sort of ceremony to even get the process started, and it can be somewhat arbitrary.

  Andrew Bird

  Process, Songwriting, Ceremony

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• 99 per cent of your life recognises things without definition, a baby recognises its mother's face without having it defined. It's just an arbitrary rule this rule of definition that Socrates set down.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Mother, Baby, Definitions

  Source: www.theguardian.com

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• A doctor is not criticized for describing the manifestations and symptoms of an illness, even though the symptoms may be disgusting. I feel that a writer has the right to the same freedom In fact, I think that the time has come for the line between literature and science, a purely arbitrary line, to be erased.

  William S. Burroughs

  Thinking, Doctors, Lines

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• There are random moments - tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my children's rooms - when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead.

  Elizabeth Berg

  Happiness, Quilts, Laughter

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• Nothing distinguishes more clearly conditions in a free country from those in a country under arbitrary government than the observance in the former of the great principles known as the Rule of Law.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Country, Government, Law

  "Der Weg zur Knechtschaft (The Road to Serfdom)". Book by Friedrich August von Hayek, reason.com. 1944.

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• A government on the principles on which constitutional governments arising out of society are established, cannot have the right of altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself what it pleased; and wherever such a right is set up, it shows there is no constitution.

  Thomas Paine

  Government, Principles, Would Be

  Thomas Paine (1830). “The Political Writings of Thomas Paine ...: Prospects on the Rubicon. Rights of man, part I. Rights of man, part II. Letter to the authors of the Republican. Letter to the Abbe Sieyes. Address to the addressers. Letters to Lord Onslow. Dissertation on the first principles of government. Speech delivered in the French National convention. Letter to Mr. Secretary Dundas. The decline and fall of the English system of finance. Letter to the people of France. Reasons for preserving the life of Louis”, p.77

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• Contrary to what certain governments say, human rights are universal. Arbitrary detention, torture and discrimination hurt the human dignity of anybody, whatever his or her country of origin, religion, descent, or any other ground.

  Shirin Ebadi

  Country, Hurt, Rights

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