Quotes About Definition

The makers of dictionaries are dependent upon specialists for their definitions. A specialist's definition may be true or it may be erroneous. But its truth cannot be increased or its error diminished by its acceptance by the lexicographer. Each definition must stand on its own merits.

I don't really see huge barriers between any styles of music. My definition of music is "organizing sound and silence into emotion," and that's a very broad definition.

A savant, by definition, is somebody who has a disability and, along with that disability, has some remarkable ability. Prodigies and geniuses have the remarkable abilities that the savant shows, but they do not have a disability. So, by definition, a savant includes someone with a disability, and a prodigy or genius are people who have these remarkable skills but they do not have a disability.

Truth cannot be defined, although it can certainly be experienced. But experience is not a definition. A definition is made by the mind, experience comes through participating. If somebody asks, "What is a dance?" how can you define it? But you can dance and you can know the inner feel of it. God is the ultimate dance.

I profess no belief in God, which by definition is true, especially if we take the accepted definition of God. But to be an atheist is to also have a belief, and have a system, and I don't know that I like that either.

Embryonic cells, by their very definition, are not from your body. Right now, inside your body, you have everything necessary to build what you need now.

Because by definition they lack any sense of mutuality or wholeness, our specializations subsist on conflict with one another. The rule is never to cooperate, but rather to follow one's own interest as far as possible. Checks and balances are all applied externally, by opposition, never by self-restraint. Labor, management, the military, the government, etc., never forbear until their excesses arouse enough opposition to force them to do so.

Books can accommodate the proximity of computers but it doesn't seem to work the other way around. Computers now literally drive out books from the place that should, by definition, be books' own home: the library.

My definition of fake news is a content-like object that is a story, an article, a video, a tweet that has been fabricated, completely invented out of thin air, intentionally for the purpose of misleading.

Our lives are about development, mutation and the possibility of change; that is almost a definition of what life is: change... If you disable change, if you effectively stop time, if you prevent the possibility of the alteration of an individual's circumstances — and that must include at least the possibility that they alter for the worse — then you don't have life after death; you just have death.

The double jeopardy of being black and female in a racist and sexist society may well make one less afraid of the sanctions against success. A non-subservient black woman is by definition a transgressive- she is the ultimate outsider.

No-one has held back. They have put some definition around the numbers and now we have to wait for the reality.

In spite the mountains of books written about art, no precise definition of art has been constructed. And the reason for this is that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty.

My briefest ever definition of science fiction is 'Hubris clobbered by Nemesis.'

Definition of 'Free': You pay for it whether or not you elect to receive it.

What you do with your life is ascribing more to what you invest your time in. If you spend a lot of time on your phone, you're ascribing more worship to that. Anything can become, by that definition, some form of idol or deity or ultimate worth in your life.

By very definition this wilderness is a need. The idea of wilderness as an area without man's influence is man's own concept. Its values are human values. Its preservation is a purpose that arises out of man's own sense of his fundamental needs

A son or daughter in any human family is either born to or adopted by the parents. By definition, a child can't be both. But with God we're both born of Him and adopted by Him.

The poor lack money. They lack money because they do not know the secret of productive wealth. They know it is possible to be old, unemployed, uneducated, lazy - even halt, deaf, dumb, and blind-and still be excessively rich. But you have to be in on the secret, and the poor by definition are not.

Innovation is applied creativity. By definition, innovation is always about introducing something new, or improved, or both and it is usually assumed to be a positive thing.

The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions - none more so than the most capable.

Never believe that the fiction writing life makes sense.... It's insanity by definition.

The God who inspired the Bible is the same God who made the universe, Earth, and all life. This God is the very definition of truth; therefore nature's record will never contradict Scripture and vice versa. When a seeming contradiction confronts us, we can know with certainty we have either misunderstood (one, the other, or both revelations) or perhaps we haven't yet dug deploy enough. Whatever the case, we can embrace the opportunity to gain greater knowledge and appreciation for the Bible, for nature, and for the God who is responsible for both.

I have changed my definition of tragedy. I now think tragedy is not foul deeds done to a person (usually noble in some manner) but rather that tragedy is irresolvable conflict.

Maybe that was the definition of life everlasting: the belief that the next generation would carry your work forward.

If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness.

Believing in an idea is dangerous! Because belief is absolute, and absolute, is unconditional, it is supreme, its ultimate and therefore fixed, which by definition will never be acceptable to change.

My definition of poor are those who need too much. Because those who need too much are never satisfied.

Maleness in America is not absolutely defined; it has to be kept and re-earned every day, and one essential element in the definition is beating women in every game that both sexes play.

Proponents of same-sex marriage regularly label opponents 'radical' and 'extremist.' However, given that no society in thousands of years has allowed same-sex marriage, it is, by definition, the proponents of same-sex marriage whose position is radical and extreme.

I guess everyone has their own definition of what folk is or pop or whatever. I find it incredibly hard to describe music these days.

I think maybe even one of the reasons I became an actor was actually to hide. I mean, it sounds paradoxical because, of course, people are standing up in a public place and encouraging other people to look at them. So that's not the conventional definition of hiding.

I define the terms "founding fathers" and "founders" broadly to include an entire generation or two of Americans from many walks of life who, in the last half of the 18th century and early 19th century, articulated the rights of colonists, secured independence from Great Britain, and established new constitutional republics at both the national and state levels. This definition includes a cast of thousands who played their patriotic part at the local, state, and/or national levels. Among them were citizen soldiers, elected representatives, polemicists, and patriot preachers.

"We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable" in a draft of the Declaration of Independence changes it instead into an assertion of rationality. The scientific mind of Franklin drew on the scientific determinism of Isaac Newton and the analytic empiricism of David Hume and Gottfried Leibniz. In what became known as "Hume's Fork" the latters' theory distinguished between synthetic truths that describe matters of fact, and analytic truths that are self-evident by virtue of reason and definition.

I've always been interested in definitions, because in the Bible, the Ten Commandments are there but there's no real clear definition of what sin is, in a fundamental sense - how we can use the words to evaluate our lives as we go along: Am I doing something that is ethically good? Am I being worthwhile in my life at this moment?

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, then liberalism is a form of insanity.

Where some may see flat, static narratives, I see a spectrum of tonal gradations and realities. What I am creating is literally black portraiture with ballpoint pen ink. I'm looking for that in-between state in an individual where the overarching definition is lost. Skin as geography is the terrain I expand by emphasizing the specificity of blackness, where an individual’s subjectivity, various realities and experiences can be drawn onto the diverse topography of the epidermis. From there, the possibilities of portraying a fully-fledged person are endless.

Don't take anyone else's definition of success as your own. (This is easier said than done.)

In my experience, Cupid's arrows rarely strike two people with the same definition of cleanliness. One partner usually feels like he or she is being asked to live in a furniture exhibit in the British Museum. The other partner remains convinced that he or she is forced to contend with the human version of Hurricane Gilbert.

If you're a Republican who's a threat to the Democrats, of course you are a racist. That's the definition of a racist, nowadays.

There is one class of mind that loves to lean on rules and definitions, and another that discards them as far as possible. A faddist will generally ask for a definition of faddism, and one who is not a faddist will be impatient of being asked to give one.

When night falls over Washington, D.C., memorials, public buildings, and broad avenues become ethereal shapes in soft light and shadow. Floodlights, piercing the darkness, etch familiar landmarks in silver against a velvet sky. Unsuspected definition of form and contour is revealed.

Lincoln's reference to government of the people, by the people, for the people is a generally satisfactory definition of democracy. I say generally because when it comes to fair and workable details, democracy fails to completely meet the criteria enunciated by Lincoln by a rather wide margin.

Many people operate as though the definition of faith were, Don't ask questions, just believe. They quote Jesus himself, who taught his followers to have the faith of a child (Mark 10:15). But I once heard Francis Schaeffer respond by saying, "Don't you realize how many questions children ask?"

The definition of fascism is The marriage of corporation and state.

Can anything be imagined more abhorrent to every sentiment of generosity and justice, than the law which arms the rich with the legal right to fix, by assize, the wages of the poor? If this is not slavery, we have forgotten its definition. Strike the right of associating for the sale of labor from the privileges of a freeman, and you may as well bind him to a master, or ascribe him to the soil.

Please, a definition: A hibernation is a covert preparation for a more overt action.

There may or may not be a God or gods; the Siblings do not concern themselves with proving or disproving such a thing. By definition, gods are more powerful than men, and thus quite able to fend for themselves without help.