Arbitrariness Quotes
More Arbitrariness Quotes
Words are not (except in their own little corner) facts or things: we need therefore to prise them off the world, to hold them apart from and against it, so that we can realize their inadequacies and arbitrariness, and can relook at the world without blinkers.
j. l. austin— p. 182 (Philosophical Papers, (1979))
Every established order tends to produce (to very different degrees with different means) the naturalization of its own arbitrariness.
pierre bourdieu— p. 164; as cited in: Jan E. M. Houben (1996) Ideology and Status of Sanskrit, p. 190
That from the outset they expect or even impose all the properties of finite numbers upon the numbers in question, while on the other hand the infinite numbers, if they are to be considered in any form at all, must (in their contrast to the finite numbers) constitute an entirely new kind of number, whose nature is entirely dependent upon the nature of things and is an object of research, but not of our arbitrariness or prejudices.
georg cantor— Letter to Gustac Enestrom, as quoted in Georg Cantor : His Mathematics and Philosophy of the Infinite (1990) by Joseph Warren Dauben ~ ISBN 0691024472
To the excessively fearful the chief characteristic of power is its arbitrariness. Man had to gain enormously in confidence before he could conceive an all-powerful God who obeys his own laws.
Eric Hoffer— Section 163 (Reflections on the Human Condition (1973))
It is a bad thing to perform menial duties even for the sake of freedom; to fight with pinpricks, instead of with clubs. I have become tired of hypocrisy, stupidity, gross arbitrariness, and of our bowing and scraping, dodging, and hair-splitting over words. Consequently, the government has given me back my freedom.
karl marx— Letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge (25 January 1843), after the Prussian government dissolved the newspaper Neue Rheinische Zeitung, of which Marx was the editor
It is impossible to repristinate a past world picture by sheer resolve, especially a mythical world picture, now that all of our thinking is irrevocably formed by science. A blind acceptance of New Testament mythology would be simply arbitrariness; to make such acceptance a demand of faith would be to reduce faith to a work. ... We cannot use electric lights and radios and, in the event of illness, avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means and at the same time believe in the spirit and wonder world of the New Testament.
— Rudolf Bultmann,New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1984), pp. 3-4
It is impossible to repristinate a past world picture by sheer resolve, especially a mythical world picture, now that all of our thinking is irrevocably formed by science. A blind acceptance of New Testament mythology would be simply arbitrariness; to make such acceptance a demand of faith would be to reduce faith to a work.
rudolf bultmann— Rudolf Bultmann, New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (1984), p. 3
