#arbitrary

Be just and if you can't be just, be arbitrary. ↗

— William S. Burroughs

#just #you

The decree of a coercive tribunal would not need to conform to the true standard of wages, the final productivity of social labor. It would introduce into distribution a genuinely arbitrary element, with a very large ultimate power to pervert the natural system. ↗

— John Bates Clark

#coercive #conform #decree #distribution #element

It took us a long time to find out that we had been lied to by our parents' generation. The moralities that were followed during our parents' generation were basically arbitrary. This caused a rift between the two generations, which was brought on by the beatniks. ↗

— Peter Fonda

#basically #beatniks #been #between #brought

If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place. ↗

— Margaret Mead

#arbitrary #contrasting #culture #diverse #each

The possession of arbitrary power has always, the world over, tended irresistibly to destroy humane sensibility, magnanimity, and truth. ↗

— Frederick Law Olmsted

#arbitrary #arbitrary power #destroy #humane #irresistibly

Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. ↗

— John Quincy Adams

#arbitrary #arbitrary power #bud #ever #liberties

Science is not a game in which arbitrary rules are used to decide what explanations are to be permitted. ↗

— Michael Behe

#decide #explanations #game #permitted #rules

I didn't want to write a biographie romancee especially since I already write novels, nor did I want to challenge the rules of the biography game, arbitrary as those rules might be. ↗

— Edmund White

#arbitrary #biography #challenge #did #especially

The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired. ↗

— Stephen Hawking

#been #certain #divinely #events #gradual

Jackson went from the professor's chair to the officer's saddle. He carried with him the very elements of character which made him odious as a teacher; but I never saw him in an arbitrary mood. ↗

— Daniel H. Hill

#carried #chair #character #elements #him