Arbitrary Quotes - Page 19

• Art is not arbitrary. A fine painting is not there by accident; it is not arrived at by chance. We are sensitive to tonalities.

  Frederick Sommer

  Art, Chance, Painting

  Frederick Sommer (1984). “Sommer: Words”

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• We have a long history of snapshot photography that appeared to many to be more arbitrary and idiosyncratic than much of the work of professionals. We valued it for what it could tell us about the details of people's daily lives.

  Fred Ritchin

  Photography, Long, People

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• I couldn't write a political song. There's just opinion; it's all arbitrary anyway. It's all subjective.

  Cass McCombs

  Song, Writing, Political

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• In a museum in El Paso, Texas, there's a map that shows all the places the border between the U.S. and Mexico has been (because it shifted) - I find it very clarifying (not confusing) to be reminded that everything we feel like we've really pinned down is transient, arbitrary, and marks the site of a painful if not violent negotiation, one that may not have ended.

  Laura Mullen

  Museums, Texas, Confusing

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I am a mortal enemy to arbitrary government and unlimited power. I am naturally very jealous for the rights and liberties of my country, and the least encroachment of those invaluable privileges is apt to make my blood boil.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Country, Jealous, Rights

  Benjamin Franklin, Walter Isaacson (2003). “A Benjamin Franklin Reader”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

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• If you dread the thought of wasted time in meetings, chances are that your team members feel the same way. Team members are also demotivated by one-way discussions, haphazard participation and arbitrary decisions. Structure every meeting at the start and summarize them at the end.

  Martin Zwilling

  Team, Decision, Way

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• Don't make a big distinction between fiction and non-fiction. These are arbitrary distinctions.

  Farley Mowat

  Fiction, Bigs, Distinction

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• A nation ignorant of the equal benefits of liberty and law, must be awed by the flashes of arbitrary power: the cruelty of a despot will assume the character of justice; his profusion, of liberality; his obstinacy, of firmness.

  Edward Gibbon

  Character, Law, Justice

  Edward Gibbon (2016). “The Collected Works of Edward Gibbon: Historical Works, Autobiographical Writings and Private Letters, Including The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.3359, e-artnow

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• We have created islands, small islands of power, but we have not built a bridge between those islands, .. The center and the territories, regional and local authorities are still competing with each other, competing for power. Those who take advantage of disorder and arbitrary rule are watching their mutually destructive fight.

  Vladimir Putin

  Fighting, Islands, Bridges

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• 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

  Play, Choices, Important

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 1961-2007”

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• A person's willingness to conform to arbitrary parameters is not a good criterion for selecting talent or allocating rewards.

  Bruce Tulgan

  Rewards, Conformity, Talent

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• The treatment of the indeterminacy principle as absolute and final can then be criticized as constituting an arbitrary restriction on scientific theories, since it does not follow from the quantum theory as such, but rather from the assumption of the unlimited validity of certain of its features, an assumption that can in no way ever be subjected to experimental proof.

  David Bohm

  Science, Principles, Doe

  David Bohm (2004). “Causality and Chance in Modern Physics”, p.47, Routledge

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• If you punish him for what he sees you practise yourself, he... will be apt to interpret it the peevishness and arbitrary imperiousness of a father, who, without any ground for it, would deny his son the liberty and pleasure he takes himself.

  John Locke

  Father, Son, Liberty

  John Locke (1727). “The works of John Locke ...”, p.27

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• It is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people. It is not our duty to understand the arbitrary, meaningless dictates of machines.

  Donald A. Norman

  People, Design, Machines

  Donald A. Norman (2013). “The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition”, p.16, Basic Books

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• People are, by and large, quite poor at judging correct absolute values but are astute about determining relative values. Psychologists call this coherent arbitrariness, which suggests that individuals are coherent when they compare prices on a relative basis but arbitrary when those prices are considered versus fundamental value.

  Michael Mauboussin

  Relative Value, Judging, People

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• To consider powerful souls as if they were a useful public resource is quite foreign to our customs. In a small sense it is undemocratic, for it assumes that some people really know better in a way that must seem arbitrary to most. In a large sense it is certainly democratic, in that it makes the great man serve as a man.

  Paul Goodman

  Powerful, Men, People

  Growing Up Absurd" by Paul Goodman, (p. 153-154), 1956.

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• There is something on earth greater than arbitrary or despotic power. The lightning has its power, and the whirlwind has its power, and the earthquake has its power; but there is something among men more capable of shaking despotic thrones than lightning, whirlwind, or earthquake, and that is, the excited and aroused indignation of the whole civilized world.

  Daniel Webster

  Men, Earthquakes, Lightning

  DANIEL WEBSTER (1853). “THE WORKS OF DANIEL WEBSTER; VOLUME II”, p.514

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• Books are not only the arbitrary sum of our dreams, and our memory. They also give us the model of self-transcende nce.

  Susan Sontag

  Dream, Memories, Book

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• Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. Be true to the highest within your soul and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionaliti es or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Being Yourself, Men, Soul

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• The utopian schemes of leveling and a community of goods,  are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government unconstitutional.

  Samuel Adams

  Government, Ideas, Community

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• The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it.

  John F. Kennedy

  Long Ago, People, Secret

  Address to the American Newspaper Publishers, delivered 27 April 1961, Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York

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• The laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are
  neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that
  those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity...will
  respect the less important and arbitrary ones... Such laws make things worse
  for the assaulted and better for the assailants, they serve rather to
  encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with
  greater confidence than an armed man.

  Cesare Beccaria

  Men, Gun, Law

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• By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Government, Giving, Democracy

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• Veganism is about nonviolence. It is about not engaging in harm to other sentient beings; to oneself; and to the environment upon which all beings depend for life. In my view, the animal rights movement is, at its core, a movement about ending violence to all sentient beings. It is a movement that seeks fundamental justice for all. It is an emerging peace movement that does not stop at the arbitrary line that separates humans from nonhumans.

  Gary L. Francione

  Peace, Animal, Rights

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• A fundamental element of human nature is the need for creative work, for creative inquiry, for free creation without the arbitrary limiting effects of coercive institutions. A decent society should maximize the possibilities for this fundamental human characteristic to be realized.

  Noam Chomsky

  Creative, Needs, Inquiry

  Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault (2013). “The Chomsky - Foucault Debate: On Human Nature”, p.35, The New Press

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