Quotessence
Home / Topics / Arbitrary Quotes

Arbitrary Quotes

Browse 465 quotes about Arbitrary.

Related topics

IfsPeopleGovernmentMenWayWorldLawThinkingLibertyHumansReasonSeemsKnowsMayMadeUseKindShouldBelieveGivenChoicesDecisionFirstsIdeasNeedsPersonsArtCharacterMatterWantHardMeanPrinciplesStatesValuesWritingFeelsHas BeensPoliticalRealTryingWholeArtificialAuthorityChanceFormIndividualLinesMightMindReligiousTyrannyBookCapriciousConstitutionHandsOrderSometimesStoriesTwoVirtueWellsWould BeAgeCountryCultureDemocracyDestinyEarthGivingInstitutionsLittlesLooksPaintingPowerRightsRunningScienceSelfStandardsStillsWarCertainCitizensConnectionsConsequenceCustomsDefinitionsDifferentDreamForceInterestJusticeLibertarianLife IsLongNationsNaturalPoliticsProcessmore

Arbitrary Quotes

“Now how does all this relate to Islamic jihad? Islam sees violence as a means of propagating the Muslim faith. Islam divides the world into two camps: the dar al-Islam (House of Submission) and the dar al-harb (House of War). The former are those lands which have been brought into submission to Islam; the latter are those nations which have not yet been brought into submission. This is how Islam actually views the world! By contrast, the conquest of Canaan represented God’s just judgement upon those peoples. The purpose was not at all to get them to convert to Judaism! War was not being used as an instrument of propagating the Jewish faith. Moreover, the slaughter of the Canaanites represented an unusual historical circumstance, not a regular means of behavior. The problem with Islam, then, is not that it has got the wrong moral theory; it’s that it has got the wrong God. If the Muslim thinks that our moral duties are constituted by God’s commands, then I agree with him. But Muslims and Christians differ radically over God’s nature. Muslims believe that God loves only Muslims. Allah has no love for unbelievers and sinners. Therefore, they can be killed indiscriminately. Moreover, in Islam God’s omnipotence trumps everything, even His own nature. He is therefore utterly arbitrary in His dealing with mankind.”

ViolenceMurderIslamTerrorismJudgementDivisionSubmissionArbitraryMuslimAllahJihadOmnipotenceUnbelieversChristianity And IslamIslamic TerrorismMuslim FaithDivine Command TheoryIslamic JihadChristianity Versus IslamChristianity Vs IslamNature Of AllahReligion Of ViolenceSubmission To Islam
Author:William Lane Craig
Create image

“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.”

IfsMayRealShowsHandsScienceDecisionPrinciplesForgottenGoldenInterpretationUnitsSectionsArbitrarySelectedGeologyCorrelationReal WorkNomenclature
Author:D. V. Ager
Create image

“What causes adolescents to rebel is not the assertion of authority but the arbitrary use of power, with little explanation of the rules and no involvement in the decision-making.”

LittlesUseFatherCausesDecisionAuthorityExplanationDecision MakingRebelArbitraryInvolvementAssertionUse Of Power
Book:You and Your Adolescent, New and Revised edition: The Essential Guide for Ages 10-25
Create image

“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.”

IfsWorldGivingFirstsMayHas BeensWarGovernmentAmericaPresidentMoralPrinciplesTakenConstitutionAffairLipsObligationWar Of The WorldsSubstitutesOfficersWorld War IiWorld War IArbitraryOathSanctionsPrecedentMoral ObligationLip ServiceConstitutional Government
Author:Charles A. Beard
Create image

“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”

PeopleShouldBelieveHandsGovernmentFallWealthHalfDangerousWillingNeededCitizensPoliticianDemocraticPainfulEnormousPreservesVotersRepublicArbitraryPollsDemocratic Republic
Author:Thomas Sowell
Create image

“It is the wicked deception of love that it begins by making us dwell not upon a woman in the outside world but upon a doll inside our head, the only woman who is always available in fact, the only one we shall ever possess, whom the arbitrary nature of memory, almost as absolute as that of the imagination, may have made as different from the real woman as the real Balbec had been from the Balbec I imagined- a dummy creation that little by little, to our own detriment, we shall force the real woman to resemble.”

WorldMayLittlesMadeDifferentRealFactsForceImaginationMemoriesCreationAbsolutesAvailableDeceptionWickedArbitraryDollsOutside WorldDummyReal Women
Book:The Guermantes Way
Create image

“We cannot by a little verbal sophistry confound the qualities of different minds, nor force opposite excellences into a union by all the intolerance in the world. If we have a taste for some one precise style or manner, we may keep it to ourselves and let others have theirs. If we are more catholic in our notions, and want variety of excellence and beauty, it is spread abroad for us to profusion in the variety of books and in the several growth of men's minds, fettered by no capricious or arbitrary rules.”

IfsMenWorldWantMindMayLittlesBookDifferentForceGrowthQualityStyleTasteOppositesCatholicUnionsExcellenceNotionSpreadVarietyIntolerancePreciseArbitraryCapriciousSophistryDifferent Minds
Author:William Hazlitt
Create image

“In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one's autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement - the number restriction (two and only two) - is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.”

PeopleIfsYearsFirstsTwoChoicesIndividualNumbersRightsGayYears AgoOppositesPrejudiceUnionsGenderTraditionalDefinedDenialLogicalRequirementsEssaysArbitraryGay MarriageRestrictionGay RightsExclusionPolygamyAutonomousTraditional MarriageIndividual Choice
Author:Charles Krauthammer
Create image

“A license cannot be revoked because a man is red-headed or because he was divorced, except for a calling, if such there be, for which red-headedness or an unbroken marriage may have some rational bearing. If a State licensing agency lays bare its arbitrary action, or if the State law explicitly allows it to act arbitrarily, that is precisely the kind of State action which the Due Process Clause forbids.”

IfsMenKindMayStatesActionLawProcessCallingLaysDuesRationalAgencyLicenseArbitraryDivorcedUnbrokenClausesDue ProcessLicensing
Author:Felix Frankfurter
Create image

“The power of discretionary disqualification by one law of Parliament, and the necessity of paying every debt of the Civil List by another law of Parliament, if suffered to pass unnoticed, must establish such a fund of rewards and terrors as will make Parliament the best appendage and support of arbitrary power that ever was invented by the wit of man.”

IfsMenLawSupportRewardsTerrorDebtListsWitFundParliamentArbitraryUnnoticedDisqualification
Book:Burke, Select Works
Create image

“The necessity for power is obvious, because life cannot be lived without order; but the allocation of power is arbitrary because all men are alike, or very nearly. Yet power must not seem to be arbitrarily allocated, because it will not then be recognized as power. Therefore prestige, which is illusion, is of the very essence of power.”

MenSeemsOrderIllusionEssenceObviousArbitraryPrestigeAllocation
Book:Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings
Create image

“In desperation I asked Fermi whether he was not impressed by the agreement between our calculated numbers and his measured numbers. He replied, "How many arbitrary parameters did you use for your calculations?" I thought for a moment about our cut-off procedures and said, "Four." He said, "I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk." With that, the conversation was over.”

SaidI CanMomentsUseRememberUsedNumbersFiveFourCuttingFitConversationMy FriendsAgreementImpressedElephantsDesperationArbitraryProceduresCalculationsTrunksParametersNot ImpressedVon Neumann
Author:Freeman Dyson
Create image

“We have more than two options. A critique of reason does not have to be a call for the return of superstition and arbitrary power. Our problems do not lie with reason itself but with our obsessive treatment of reason as an absolute value. Certainly it is one of our qualities, but it functions positively only when balanced and limited by the others.”

DoeTwoReasonProblemLyingValuesQualityReturnFunctionAbsolutesTreatmentSuperstitionsBalancedArbitraryPositivelyCritiqueObsessiveTwo Options
Author:John Ralston Saul
Create image

“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.”

PeopleThinkingYearsHumansSeemsRealizingCommunityCivilizationPaidWesternErasDenialCorporationsPhrasesRegulationReignHuman ExperienceArbitraryWestern CivilizationTransnational Corporations
Author:John Ralston Saul
Create image

“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.”

WorldDifferentFormLawLanguageGivenKingsDegreesBoundsDuesSupremeKingdomsTitlesEquityArbitraryMagistrates
Book:A Supplement to the Miscellaneous Works of the Late Dr. Arbuthnot
Create image

“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.”

IfsGovernmentWishIntellectualSafetyExtremesSecureArtisticArrogantArbitraryHerdsCivilisationMenaceCoarse
Book:Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft
Create image

“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.”

IfsWorldGivingMeanSeemsValuesIndividualInterestIllusionBackgroundsSecurePreservesStreamsCosmosMeaninglessArtificialArbitraryEnglishmen
Author:H. P. Lovecraft
Create image

“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.”

MindStatesFeelingsBodySpiritualValuesBeliefReligiousTheoryFlowClaimsDoctrineSuperiorsRevelationsExceptionState Of MindOur ThoughtsConnectingArbitraryPsychoThoughts And FeelingsIllogicalPhysiologicalCausationSpiritual ValuesRefutation
Book:The Varieties of Religious Experience
Create image

“The images selected by memory are as arbitrary, as narrow, as elusive as those which the imagination had formed and reality has destroyed. There is no reason why, existing outside ourselves, a real place should conform to the pictures in our memory rather than those in our dreams.”

ShouldRealReasonDreamRealityImaginationMemoriesDestroyedReason WhyNo ReasonConformOur DreamsArbitraryOur MemoriesElusiveSelected
Book:In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)
Create image

“Speech, originally, was the device whereby Man learned, imperfectly, to transmit the thoughts and emotions of his mind. By setting up arbitrary sounds and combinations of sounds to represent certain mental nuances, he developed a method of communication--but one which in its clumsiness and thick-thumbed inadequacy degenerated all the delicacy of the mind into gross and guttural signaling.”

MenMindCertainLanguageSoundEmotionCommunicationSpeechMethodSettingSettingsCombinationDevicesThickGrossArbitraryNuanceTransmitDelicacyInadequacyThoughts And EmotionsClumsiness
Book:Foundation Trilogy
Create image