Famous quotes containing the word arbitrary:
“Languages exist by arbitrary institutions and conventions among peoples; words, as the dialecticians tell us, do not signify naturally, but at our pleasure.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)
“Poetry is a very complex art.... It is an art of pure sound bound in through an art of arbitrary and conventional symbols.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“Pity on the person who has become accustomed to seeing in necessity something arbitrary, who ascribes to the arbitrary some sort of reason, and even claims that following that sort of reason has religious value.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)