Arbitrary Quotes - Page 6

A jurisdiction thus vague and arbitrary was exposed to the most dangerous abuse: the substance, as well as the form, of justice were often sacrificed to the prejudices of virtue, the bias of laudable affection, and the grosser seductions of interest or resentment.

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

Later, however, I came to recognize the objective nature of these dreams or fantasies ... Thus it was that I gradually came to acknowledge that such fantasies or dreams are neither meaningless nor purely arbitrary but rather convey a sort of "second meaning" of the terms applied.

For instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of colour to express myself more forcefully.

I removed the freeway from its temporal context. Overpasses, cloverleafs, exit ramps took on the personality of Mayan ruins for me. Without destination, without cessation, my run was often silent and empty; there were no increments, no arbitrary graduations reducing time to functional units. I abstracted and purified.

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 the time is arbitrary. You pick your zero point anywhere you want, that way you can shuffle each person's time line sideways till they all coincide.

We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience.

There's a rule for what makes good fantasy work, and it's as strange as any riddle ever posed in a fairy tale: In fantasy, you can do anything; and therefore, the one thing you must not do is 'just anything.' Why? Because in a story where anything can happen and anything can be true, nothing matters. You have no reason to care what happens. It's all arbitrary, and arbitrary isn't interesting.

In every society, the definitions of sanity and madness are arbitrary - are, in the largest sense, political.

There is something so arbitrary about prizes.

Indeed, there is nothing more arbitrary than intervening as a stranger in a destiny which is not ours.

Intellectually, I know I am worthy, however arbitrary a thing worthiness is, and have always been worthy.

So the time line of when we consider a fetus 'human' is arbitrary after conception.

The most insupportable of tyrants exclaim against the exercise of arbitrary power.

Officially in America we now have a totally arbitrary and limitless government. That is, we have a ‘total government.’ In short, we’ve got totalitarian government.

Art is arbitrary but it sort of reveals itself to be right or wrong anyway.

The redemptive power of divine grace no longer seemed credible, nor very respectable in the arbitrary performance that was claimed for it.

Movies tie things up in an arbitrary length of time, but I have always liked things that aren't fully realised.

I wanted to dismantle the bollocks that there's a military structure to a gang, with a leader, second leader, the good looking one, first babe, second babe. It's far more arbitrary than that and their values shouldn't be romanticised. They aren't something you want to sign up to.

Charities are really good. To a certain extent, the ones you pick are arbitrary.

People who don't like my work say that the connections seem too arbitrary. But that's how life is.

I’ve never seen the need to choose one type of music at the exclusion of another. That would feel kind of sad and arbitrary.

If you dread the thought of wasted time in meetings, chances are that your team members feel the same way. Team members are also demotivated by one-way discussions, haphazard participation and arbitrary decisions. Structure every meeting at the start and summarize them at the end.

I read things like theology, and I read about science, Scientific American and publications like that, because they stimulate again and again my sense of the almost arbitrary given-ness of experience, the fact that nothing can be taken for granted.

She didn’t understand a damned thing about life except that it was arbitrary and cruel, and some people got away with murder while others made one tiny, careless mistake and paid a terrible price.