Arbitrary Quotes

303 quotes by 261 authors

The line we draw between animals that are socially acceptable and those we find repugnant can be awfully arbitrary. — Alexandra Harney
What is time? The shadow on the dial, the striking of the clock, the running of the sand, day and night, summer and winter, months,… — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
To create a community of radical scholars, men and women who recognize that rules and social conventions are arbitrary, but have mastered them nonetheless, a… — Howard Adelman
To me, length is an artificial and arbitrary factor in a film. — Frank Darabont
Rules are foolish, arbitrary, mindless things that raise you quickly to a level of acceptable mediocrity, then prevent you from progressing further. — Bruce Barnbaum
Hard times are purposeful, meant to refine and redirect us. They're not arbitrary or random, and they're definitely not cruel. — Liz Curtis Higgs
There can be no compromise between freedom and government controls; to accept 'just a few controls' is to surrender the principle of inalienable individual rights… — Ayn Rand
Iâ€™ve never agreed with the conventional wisdom that â€˜actors are great liars.â€™ If more people understood the acting process, the goals of good actors, the… — Rob Lowe
When you have trouble with thingsâ€”whether it's figuring out whether to push or pull a door or the arbitrary vagaries of the modern computer and… — Donald A. Norman
Chaos, the life force of the universe, is not human-hearted. Therefore the wizard cannot be human-hearted when he seeks to tap the force of the… — Peter J. Carroll
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… — Noam Chomsky
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… — Benjamin Franklin
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
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… — Ralph Waldo Emerson
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… — Atul Gawande
..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… — Friedrich August von Hayek
Indeed, there is nothing more arbitrary than intervening as a stranger in a destiny which is not ours... — Simone de Beauvoir
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… — Charles Handy
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… — Jesse Ventura
Everybody who says the same words is the same person if the spectra are the same only they happen differently in time, you dig? But… — Thomas Pynchon

Who Wrote These Arbitrary Quotes

261 authors contributed a total of 303 Arbitrary Quotes, led by these top contributors: