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Arbitrary Quotes

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Arbitrary Quotes

“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.”

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Book:Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll
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“To the American people of 1789, their nation promised a new way of life: each individual a free man; each having the right to seek his own happiness; a republican form of government in which the people would be sovereign; and no arbitrary power over people's lives. Less than two hundred years later, almost every aspect of the dream has been lost.”

PeopleMenWayYearsHas BeensTwoDreamGovernmentWould BeFormIndividualLostNationsRepublicanHundredAspectNew WaysSovereignArbitraryFree ManForms Of GovernmentNew Way Of Life
Book:The Greening of America
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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.”

GovernmentRunningPoliticalEvilFeltRiskProfitConfusionLatterDisplayArbitraryGratificationConcealedUnproductive
Book:A Treatise on Political Economy; Or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth
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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.”

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Author:Michio Kushi
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“Knowledge is a continuous fabric, in which ideas are connected to other ideas. Reason-free zones, in which people can assert arbitrary beliefs safe from ordinary standards of evaluation, can only corrupt this fabric, just as a contradiction can corrupt a system of logic, allowing falsehoods to proliferate through it.”

PeopleIdeasReasonBeliefSafeStandardsOrdinaryLogicConnectedContradictionZoneAllowingFalsehoodFabricRationalityArbitraryEvaluation
Author:Steven Pinker
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“We are deeply concerned about the situation in Russia with regards to human rights. There are several examples of this situation, such as the new law requiring NGOs to register as "foreign agents", the law banning homosexual "propaganda", problems with the rule of law and arbitrary judicial processes, and court rulings against the opposition.”

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Author:Cecilia Malmstrom
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“What outsiders discover in their adventures on the other side of the looking glass is the courage to repudiate self-contempt and recognise their “alienation” as a precious gift of freedom from arbitrary norms that they did not make and did not sanction. At the moment a person questions the validity of the rules, the victim is no longer a victim.”

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Author:Jamake Highwater
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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.”

PeopleIfsLittlesLongFactsTodayValuesNationsSecretDangerSurvivalTraditionDecidedThreatJustifyLong AgoArbitrarySecrecyRestrictionOathOpposingProceedingImitatingSecret SocietyPertinentConcealment
Author:John F. Kennedy
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“The claim is also sometimes made that science is as arbitrary or irrational as all other claims to knowledge, or that reason itself is an illusion. As Ethan Allen said Those who invalidate reason ought seriously to consider whether they argue against reason with or without reason; if with reason, then they establish the principle that they are labouring to dethrone. If they argue without reason, which they must do, in order to be consistent with themselves, they are out of reach of rational conviction, nor do they deserve a rational argument.”

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Author:Carl Sagan
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“In the first place, it is obvious that not only is wealth concentrated in our times but an immense power and despotic economic dictatorship is consolidated in the hands of a few, who often are not owners but only the trustees and managing directors of invested funds which they administer according to their own arbitrary will and pleasure. This dictatorship is being most forcibly exercised by those who, since they hold the money and completely control it, control credit also and rule the lending of money.”

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Author:Pope Pius XI
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“There is some pressure when you are a woman doing what I do that you must support all other women unconditionally, no matter what they're projecting, or writing, or producing, or putting forth as their art. I think that's equally arbitrary and random and unfair, and kind of sexist. The secretly sexist way. I have really high standards for what I think is funny. I have that for everything, and I think it would be disingenuous of me to blanket-ly love everything a woman has produced simply to make a statement that we're all in this together.”

ThinkingWayWritingKindArtMatterWould BeTogetherSupportStandardsPressureNo Matter WhatStatementsUnfairArbitraryBlanketSexistHigh StandardsDisingenuous
Author:Mindy Kaling
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“Plain experience and common sense inform us that no abstract Person can have made us as we are without also wishing to delete us and start over (Gen. 8:21; Zeph. 1:2). Therefore, the existence of cruel and arbitrary nature, together with the universality of human sin, prevents us from beginning the theological enterprise with any concept of God that is distinct from revelation. All theologies of a cosmic harmonic principle shipwreck on the truths of tragedy, catastrophe, and injustice.”

HumansPersonsMadeTogetherWishSinCommonExistencePrinciplesConceptsTragedyInjusticeTheologyCommon SenseAbstractRevelationsEnterpriseCosmicCatastropheArbitraryStarting OverTheologicalShipwreckUniversality
Author:Paul F. M. Zahl
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“If we set out with... a scrupulous regard to the Constitution, the government will acquire a spirit and a tone productive of permanent blessings to the community. If on the contrary,... the Constitution is slighted, or explained away, upon every frivolous pretext, the future of government will be feeble, distracted and arbitrary. The rights of the subjects will be the sport of every party vicissitude. There will be no settled rule of conduct, but everything will fluctuate with the alternate prevalency of contending factions.”

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Author:Alexander Hamilton
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“success in L.A. is completely arbitrary. One day you're the brilliant genius of life, the next day people act like there's a bad smell when you approach. Lots of expensive, late-model cars are offered in the L.A. Times every day by people who have suddenly begun to smell bad. The stakes are just too high for human dignity.”

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Author:Cynthia Heimel
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“How on earth can religious people believe in so much arbitrary, clearly invented balderdash?....The acceptance of a creed, any creed, entitles the acceptor to membership in the sort of artificial extended family we call a congregation. It is a way to fight loneliness. Any time I see a person fleeing from reason and into religion, I think to myself, There goes a person who simply cannot stand being so goddamned lonely anymore.”

PeopleThinkingWayBelievePersonsReasonEarthReligionFightingReligiousLonelinessAcceptanceLonelyArtificialCreedsArbitraryCongregationMembershipFleeingExtended Family
Book:Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage
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“I learned in the last few years that it's really unhappy and really unsustainable to try and base your well being on something as arbitrary as record sale and critical acclaim and the interests of the public. All of those things are so fickle. So my approach now to music is I want to make records that I love, and I hope that other people love them, then that's OK.”

PeopleWantTryingYearsWellsLastsInterestRecordsApproachMusic IsCriticalUnhappyWell BeingArbitraryFickleAcclaim
Author:Moby
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“When our thoughts look real, we live in a world of suffering. When they look subjective, we live in a world of choice. When they look arbitrary, we live in a world of possibility. And when we see them as illusory, we wake up inside a world of dreams.”

WorldLooksRealDreamSufferingChoicesPossibilityWake UpOur ThoughtsSubjectiveArbitraryIllusory
Book:The Inside-out Revolution: The Only Thing You Need to Know to Change Your Life Forever
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“Nothing is arbitrary, nothing is insulated in beauty. It depends forever on the necessary and the useful. The plumage of the bird, the mimic plumage of the insect, has a reason for its rich colors in the constitution of the animal. Fitness is so inseparable an accompaniment of beauty, that it, has been taken for it.”

Has BeensReasonAnimalBeautyForeverRichTakenColorDependsBirdConstitutionInsectsArbitraryInseparable
Book:The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“The distinctions of personal merit and influence, so conspicuous in a republic, so feeble and obscure under a monarchy, were abolished by the despotism of the emperors; who substituted in their room a severe subordination of rank and office, from the titled slaves who were seated on the steps of the throne, to the meanest instruments of arbitrary power.”

RoomsStepsHistoryInfluenceOfficeInstrumentsSlaveMeritDistinctionRepublicThronesSevereObscureArbitraryMonarchyEmperorDespotismRoman EmpireSubordination
Book:The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edited and Abridged): Abridged Edition
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“But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burthens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord; nor can it reasonably be presumed that the restoration of British freedom was exempt from tumult and faction. The pre-eminence of birth and fortune must have been frequently violated by bold and popular citizens; and the haughty nobles, who complained that they were become the subjects of their own servants, would sometimes regret the reign of an arbitrary monarch.”

Has BeensSometimesPoliticalDesireHistorySubjectsRegretSourceBirthCitizensAdvantageFortuneBritishServantPerpetualReignArbitraryRestorationEscapingRoman EmpireFactionsMonarchsDiscordObtainingTumultEminenceHaughty
Book:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
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“...By combining a popular hatred of the class of entrepreneurs with the blow already given to social security by the violent and arbitrary disturbance of contract,... governments are fast rendering impossible a continuance of the social and economic order of the nineteenth century.”

GovernmentOrderGivenSocialClassImpossibleEconomicCenturySecurityHatredEntrepreneurInvestingBlowViolentContractsSocial SecurityArbitraryNineteenth CenturyDisturbanceCombiningRenderingContinuanceEconomic Order
Book:The Economic Consequences of the Peace: The classic text on the Treaty of Versailles and post war Europe
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“It is not the right of property which is protected, but the right to property. Property, per se, has no rights; but the individual - the man - has three great rights, equally sacred from arbitrary interference: the right to his life, the right to his liberty, the right to his property The three rights are so bound together as to be essentially one right. To give a man his life but to deny him his liberty, is to take from him all that makes his life worth living. To give him his liberty but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty is to still leave him a slave.”

MenGivingStillsTogetherThreeIndividualLibertyRightsHe ManSacredPropertySlaveFruitBoundsDenyProtectedArbitraryWorth LivingInterferenceBadgesLife Worth Living
Author:George Sutherland
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“The reflection and experience of many years have led me to consider the holy writings not only as the most authentic and instructive in themselves, but as the clue to all other history. They tell us what man is, and they alone tell us why he is what he is: a contradictory creature that seeing and approving of what is good, pursues and performs what is evil. All of private and public life is there displayed. ... From the same pure fountain of wisdom we learn that vice destroys freedom; that arbitrary power is founded on public immorality.”

MenWritingYearsLife IsEvilSeeingHolyPureCreaturesReflectionVicesPursueClueFountainArbitraryContradictoryPublic LifeImmoralityApproving
Author:Gouverneur Morris
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“We must uncover our rituals for what they are: completely arbitrary things, tied to our bourgeois way of life; it isgood-and that is the real theater-totranscend them in the manner of play, bymeans of games and irony; it is good to be dirty and bearded, to have long hair,to look like a girl when one is a boy (and vice versa); one must put "inplay," show up, transform and reversethe systems which quietly order us about.”

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Author:Michel Foucault
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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.”

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Author:Nathaniel Altman
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