Famous quotes containing the word arbitrary:
“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)
“Any appellative at all savouring of arbitrary rank is unsuitable to a man of liberal and catholic mind.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“We do the same thing to parents that we do to children. We insist that they are some kind of categorical abstraction because they produced a child. They were people before that, and they’re still people in all other areas of their lives. But when it comes to the state of parenthood they are abruptly heir to a whole collection of virtues and feelings that are assigned to them with a fine arbitrary disregard for individuality.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)