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Arbitrary Quotes

Browse 465 quotes about Arbitrary.

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Arbitrary Quotes

“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.”

NeedsShouldHumansCreativeEffectsHuman NatureCreationPossibilityElementsInstitutionsFundamentalsCharacteristicsDecentInquiryArbitraryCreative Work
Book:The Chomsky - Foucault Debate: On Human Nature
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“..where effective competition can be created, it is a better way of guiding individual efforts than any other... regards competition as superior not only because it is in most circumstances the most efficient method known but even more because it is the only method by which our activities can be adjusted to each other without coercive or arbitrary intervention of authority.”

WayIndividualEffortKnownCircumstancesActivityAuthorityCapitalismRegardMethodCompetitionSuperiorsEfficientFree MarketArbitraryInterventionBetter WaysIndividual Effort
Author:Friedrich August von Hayek
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“At times, in medicine, you feel you are inside a colossal and impossibly complex machine whose gears will turn for you only according to their own arbitrary rhythm. The notion that human caring, the effort to do better for people, might make a difference can seem hopelessly naive. But it isn't.”

PeopleFeelsHumansSeemsMightTurnsDifferencesEffortMachinesMedicineComplexesNotionCaringMedicalRhythmMaking A DifferenceNaiveArbitraryGearsColossal
Book:Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance
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“The first step is to measure whatever can easily be measured. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can't be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that what can't be measured easily really isn't important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that what can't be easily measured really doesn't exist. This is suicide.”

GivingFirstsImportantValuesStepsRiskThirdsManagementSuicideArtificialFourthFirst StepsBlindnessArbitraryMisleadDisregardRisk Management
Book:The Empty Raincoat: Making Sense of the Future
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“Eternal vigilance must be maintained to guard against those who seek to stifle ideas, establish a narrow orthodoxy, and divide our nation along arbitrary lines of race, ethnicity, and religious belief or non-belief.”

IdeasBeliefNationsReligiousLinesRaceEternalConstitutionDividesArbitraryOrthodoxyReligious BeliefEthnicityVigilanceEternal VigilanceRace Ethnicity
Book:Don't Start the Revolution Without Me!: From the Minnesota Governor's Mansion to the Baja Outback : Reflections and Revisionings
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“You hear a lot about God these days: God, the beneficent; God, the all-great; God, the Almighty; God, the most powerful; God, the giver of life; God, the creator of death. I mean, we're hearing about God all the time, so we better learn how to deal with it. But if we know anything about God, God is arbitrary.”

IfsKnowsMeanDealsPowerfulCreatorHearingThese DaysMost PowerfulAlmightyArbitraryGiverAlmighty GodPowerful God
Book:Dylan on Dylan: The Essential Interviews
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“Once you buy the argument that some segment of the citizenry should lose their rights, just because they are envied or resented, you are putting your own rights in jeopardy - quite aside from undermining any moral basis for respecting anybody's rights. You are opening the floodgates to arbitrary power. And once you open the floodgates, you can't tell the water where to go.”

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Author:Thomas Sowell
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“No man can delegate,... any right of arbitrary dominion over a 3rd person; for that would imply a right in the 1st person, not only to make the 3rd person his slave, but also a right to dispose of him as a slave to still other persons. Any contract to do this is necessarily a criminal one...To call such a contract a “constitution” does not at all lessen its criminality, or add to its validity.”

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Author:Lysander Spooner
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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.”

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Author:James Otis
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“The impulses of my heart are the voice of Nature, which is never mistaken. The institutions that stand in my way are man-made and are only arbitrary conventions to which I have never given my consent. In trampling these institutions underfoot, I shall have the double pleasure of satisfying my inclinations and of believing myself a hero”

MenWayBelieveHeartMadeGivenVoicePleasureHeroMy HeartInstitutionsMy WayImpulseSatisfyingConventionsMistakenConsentInclinationArbitrary
Author:Frederic Bastiat
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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.”

IfsDoeTwoGovernmentFatherGivenPartyBalanceGardenConstitutionIndependentChecksDepartmentDependentSpheresAdamPatriarchyArbitraryHeedMatriarchy
Author:Hugh Nibley
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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.”

MayStatesUseAgeLanguageCustomsPoliteElegantArbitraryUncouth
Book: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
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“The error which underlies the very existence of this debate is that there is some kind of perfect Platonic form of the computer language, which some real languages reflect more perfectly than others. Plato was brilliant for his time but reality is not expressable in terms of arbitrary visions of perfection, and furthermore, one programmer's ideal is often another's hell.”

KindRealRealityFormLanguageTermPerfectExistenceVisionHellComputerIdealsPerfectionErrorsBrilliantDebatePlatoArbitraryProgrammersComputer LanguagePlatonic
Author:Paul Vixie
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“Man knows that there are in the soul tints more bewildering, more numberless, and more nameless that the colors of an autumn forest....Yet he seriously believes that these things can every one of them , in all their tones and semi-tones, in all their blends and unions, be accurately represented by an arbitrary system of grunts and squeals. He believes that an ordinary civilized stockbroker can really produce out of his own inside noises which denote all the mysteries of memory and all the agonies of desire.”

KnowsMenBelieveSoulDesireLanguageMemoriesMysteryProduceColorOrdinaryUnionsForestsNoiseToneAutumnCivilizedAgonyArbitraryNamelessGruntStockbrokers
Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton
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