Arbitrary Quotes - Page 5

• If you don't believe there's some organising principle, or somebody up in the sky pulling the strings, then it can be very stressful. And nature itself is very arbitrary - it's not malevolent or benevolent; it doesn't even know we're here.

  Michael Shannon

  Believe, Sky, Principles

  "Michael Shannon: 'I'm not trying to exorcise any demons'" by Catherine Shoard, www.theguardian.com. November 30, 2011.

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• The issue isn't gun control but state control -- obtuse and arbitrary state control, state control run amok. ... Forget guns. If Dr. Hudson, Mr. Turnbull, Dr. Gingrich and others end up in jail it won't be for their guns but our liberties.

  George Jonas

  Running, Gun, Jail

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• What shouldn't you do if you're a young playwright? Don't bore the audience! I mean, even if you have to resort to totally arbitrary killing on stage, or pointless gunfire, at least it'll catch their attention and keep them awake. Just keep the thing going any way you can.

  Tennessee Williams

  Mean, Writing, Attention

  Tennessee Williams, Albert J. Devlin (1986). “Conversations with Tennessee Williams”, Univ Pr of Mississippi

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• I've decided I don't want to be a manager. Every time you try to be responsive to your employees, they say you're being reactive and not proactive. And when you try to be proactive, they accuse you of being capricious and arbitrary. So I don't wanna be a manager.

  Larry Wall

  Trying, Want, Computer

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• The score must govern the music. It must have authority, and not merely be an arbitrary jumping-off point for improvisation.

  Cornelius Cardew

  Jumping, Authority, Score

  Cornelius Cardew, Richard Barrett (2006). “Cornelius Cardew: A Reader”

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• Love is such an arbitrary thing. I love my mom. I love pancakes.

  Doug Stanhope

  Mom, Love Is, Things I Love

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• No language is as depending on arbitrary use and custom can ever be permanently the same, but will always be in a mutable and fluctuating state; and what is deem'd polite and elegant in one age, may be accounted uncouth and barbarous in another.

  Benjamin Martin

  Age, Use, May

  Benjamin Martin (1749). “Lingua Britannica Reformata: Or, a New English Dictionary, Under the Following Titles, Viz. I. Universal; ... VIII. Philosophical; ... To which is Prefix'd, an Introduction, Containing a Physico-grammatical Essay on the Propriety and Rationale of the English Tongue, ... By Benj. Martin”, p.482

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• No genuine choice is ever simply a matter of the arbitrary exercise of will. Take your choice of lunch today. You can't decide to want anything, but what you want will at least in part be a result of a series of other choices and judgments you've made in your life to date.

  Julian Baggini

  Exercise, Lunch, Choices

  "Choice is rarely black and white" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. August 02, 2010.

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• Everything has a reason, including the selection of the photos, which was not arbitrary but appropriate to the period, its highs and lows and my sense of them.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Painting, Reason

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• I began in 1976, with small abstract paintings that allowed me to do what I had never let myself do: put something down at random. And then, of course, I realized that it never can be random. It was all a way of opening a door for me. 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

  Art, Doors, Play

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007”, Distributed Art Pub Inc

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• The first colour charts were unsystematic. They were based directly on commercial colour samples. They were still related to Pop Art. In the canvases that followed, the colours were chosen arbitrarily and drawn by chance. Then, 180 tones were mixed according to a given system and drawn by chance to make four variations of 180 tones. But after that the number 180 seemed too arbitrary to me, so I developed a system based on a number of rigorously defined tones and proportions.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Numbers, Variation

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• Emotional and psychological pain were to become, perhaps, the most powerful force in molding the course of my life. For some people, pain and hurt breed bitterness and cynicism. For others it causes them to look deeply into themselves and into life itself in an attempt to understand the meaning beneath seemingly capricious or arbitrary happenings.

  Joseph Girzone

  Hurt, Pain, Powerful

  Joseph F. Girzone (1994). “Never Alone: A Personal Way to God”, Doubleday Books

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• Life has no meaning. It doesn't need a meaning. A meaning is an arbitrary thought formulation that we affix to it because we are in the mood. Life is its own raison d'etre.

  Frederick Lenz

  Inspirational, Buddhism, Needs

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• A part of us resists all of this and wants to make it sound as if it's much too religious, an arbitrary thing that we have to do with our life. This is nonsense. This is the real fun.

  Frederick Lenz

  Inspirational, Religious, Fun

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• There is no patriarchy or matriarchy in the garden; the two supervise each other. Adam is given no arbitrary power; Eve is to heed him only insofar as he obeys their Father--and who decides that? She must keep check on him as much as he does on her. It is, if you will, a system of checks and balances in which each party is as distinct and independent in its sphere as are the departments of government under the Constitution--and just as dependent on each other.

  Hugh Nibley

  Father, Party, Independent

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• And I take this opportunity to declare, that... I will to my dying day oppose with all the powers and faculties God has given me, all such instruments of slavery on the one hand, and villainy on the other, as this writ of assistance is. It appears to me the worst instrument of arbitrary power, - the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law book.

  James Otis

  Book, Opportunity, Hands

  "James Otis: Against Writs of Assistance". James Otis' speech (February 1761), as quoted in William Tudor "James Otis's Speech on the Writs of Assistance", books.google.com. 1906.

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• A recent poll showed that nearly half the American public believes that the government should redistribute wealth. That so many people are so willing to blithely put such an enormous and dangerous arbitrary power in the hands of politicians-\-\risking their own freedom, in hopes of getting what someone else has-\-\is a painful sign of how far many citizens and voters fall short of what is needed to preserve a democratic republic

  Thomas Sowell

  Believe, Fall, Government

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• The common view of marriage as a primitive institution implies in the man more than arbitrary superiority, such as he exercised over the child, which still remained free. The woman's slavery was assumed to be for life.

  Henry Adams

  Marriage, Children, Men

  Henry Adams (1973). “Historical Essays”, p.1, Georg Olms Verlag

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• "...arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and as a matter of law, unsupportable."

  Luther L. Bohanon

  Dark, Law, Abuse

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• The hypothesis is pretty; its only fault is that it is neither demonstrated nor demonstrable. Who does not see that this is purely arbitrary fiction that puts nothingness as existing and proposes nothing more than simple noncontradiciton?

  Galileo Galilei

  Simple, Thinking, Doe

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• One must first seek to love plants and nature, and then to cultivate that happy peace of mind which is satisfied with little. He will be happier if he has no rigid and arbitrary ideals, for gardens are coquettish, particularly with the novice.

  Liberty Hyde Bailey

  Garden, Simplicity, Mind

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• [E]very man, everywhere, should be free to develop his talents to their full potential - unhampered by arbitrary barriers of race or birth or income.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Education, Money, Men

  Johnson, Lyndon B. (1970). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968-1969”, p.172, Best Books on

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• If these precedents are to stand unimpeached, and to provide sanctions for the continued conduct of America affairs-the Constitution may be nullified by the President and officers who have taken the oath and are under moral obligation to uphold it....they may substitute personal and arbitrary government-the first principle of the totalitarian system against which it has been alleged that World War II was waged-while giving lip service to the principle of constitutional government.

  Charles A. Beard

  War, Taken, America

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• No matter what any of the grammar teachers say, punctuation is an arbitrary matter. It should be used to make sentences clear.

  Andy Rooney

  Teacher, Matter, Punctuation

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• Let us make an arbitrary decision (by a show of hands if necessary) to define the base of every stratigraphical unit in a selected section. This may be called the "Principle of the Golden Spike." Then stratigraphical nomenclature can be forgotten and we can get on with the real work of stratigraphy, which is correlation and interpretation.

  D. V. Ager

  Real, Science, Hands

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