Quotes About Definition

Courage, the original definition of courage, when it first came into the English language -- it's from the Latin word "cor," meaning "heart" - and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.

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.

Now that's a concept that's always fascinated me: the real world. Only a very specific subset of people use the term, have you noticed? To me, it seems self-evident that everyone lives in the real world - we all breathe real oxygen, eat real food, the earth under our feet feels equally solid to all of us. But clearly these people have a far more tightly circumscribed definition of reality, one that I find deeply mysterious, and an almost pathologically intense need to bring others into line with that definition.

If pressed to supplement Tweedledee's ostensive definition of logic with a discursive definition of the same subject, I would say that logic is the systematic study of the logical truths. Pressed further, I would say that a sentence is logically true if all sentences with its grammatical structure are true. Pressed further still, I would say to read this book.

The core belief that drives terrorism is the notion of a "holy place," along with the idea that some people belong there and other people don't. That's why the only solution to terrorism is for religious scholars to hold a global summit to agree on the definition of "holy place." Once they agree on a definition, it will be easier to mock it into submission.

I always go with the dictionary definition of feminism, which is just social, political and economic equality for women. And that's kind of a strategic thing on my part, because I think that it's the hardest definition to argue with. You know, who doesn't want that? Everyone wants equality for women.

...the mathematician uses an indirect definition of congruence, making use of the fact that the axiom of parallels together with an additional condition can replace the definition of congruence.

I think the definition will change as we learn more, but my working definition of solving the brain is: one, we can model, maybe in a computer, the processes that generate things like thoughts and feelings, and two, we can understand how to cure brain disorders, like Alzheimer's and epilepsy. Those are my two driving goals. One is more human-condition oriented, and one more clinical.

My definition of an educated man is the fellow who knows the right thing to do at the time it has to be done. You can be sincere and still be stupid.

There is no response to stubbornly by many posed the question of the meaning of expeditions in the high mountains. I've never felt the need for such a definition. I walked to mountains and defeated them. That's all.

Lying is, almost by definition, a refusal to cooperate with others. It condenses a lack of trust and trustworthiness into a single act. It is both a failure of understanding and an unwillingness to be understood. To lie is to recoil from relationship.

I said to one young activist who herself was the daughter of an undocumented worker, and so could speak from a very personal and legitimate perspective - I remember saying to her: I agree with you, from a moral perspective, that a child from Honduras is worth the same as my daughter. God is not a respecter of boundaries; he's not saying that American kids deserve a better life than Honduran kids. But I'm the president of the United States, and the nation-state by definition means that boundaries mean something and borders mean something.

I always say people would rather be nice than right. I like to be nice too, but come on. People frequently ask me, what is my definition of politically correct. My answer is always the same: the elevation of sensitivity over truth. People would rather be nice than right, rather be sensitive than true. Well, being nice and sensitive are important, but they're not more important than being right; they're not more important than the truth.

According to my definition of God, I'm not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes I'm looking at God. Whenever I'm listening to something I'm listening to God.

We've all received our share of good fortune, so that's my definition of much. A single blessing is all the bounty in the world, and if you've been blessed at all you're meant to pass some of that on. You're meant to set a positive example. That's our responsibility

I don’t think success is a place or a definition, I think it’s a direction.

In March of 1933 we witnessed a revolution in manner, in mores, in the definition of government. What before had been black or white sprang alive with color.

My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared.

Looks like a sand pile my kids have been playing in for a long time - it's all beat up - no definition - just a lot of bumps and holes.

All things change. The automobiles change every year. [Your] television set gets lighter and smaller and higher definition. All things in the scientific world change. But politicians do not change. They carry old values and they don't even know it.

The definition of a revolution: it destroys the perfect and enables the impossible.

We have next to consider the formal definition of virtue.

My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.

My definition of prosperity would be quite different than what most people probably imagine or think, because I think that a wholeness word that means nothing missing, nothing broken. It's not finances or materialism.

The change that is coming to the body of Christ is so profound that the world will have a new definition of Christianity... Those who submit to Him in truth... will be the most dangerous and powerful people on earth, and will be the greatest threat to the Antichrist spirit that now sits in the church as a substitute for Him.

I was involved in the color correction and the digital color correction. In an odd way, you end up making a film many times-the DVD, the archival record of a high-definition master, and so on.

As collective consciousness goes higher and higher, all the differences in the world will be appreciated more and more. A definition of peace is unity in the midst of diversity. Or you could say happiness, love, and peace in the midst of all diversity. All the differences would be appreciated fully in the light of this peace.

Realize that ultimate success comes from opportunistic,bold moves which by definition, cannot be planned.

In those days, I did what was necessary for me to win. This included training with heavy weights: a precursor for injury. So if I could do it over again I’d train with lighter weights, higher reps, no sets below 10 reps, with negatives slower than positives, and avoid injury. If I had done that, my physique wouldn’t have been quite as bulky, but with more definition and with less pain.

Though it is a team game by definition, it is actually a series of loosely connected individual efforts.

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.

Power for men means the ability to make things happen ... The female definition of power is the ability not to have to please.

For me, creativity includes problem-solving. That's the broad definition of it.

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.

There is something very sublime, though very fanciful, in Plato's description of the Supreme Being,--that truth is His body and light His shadow. According to this definition there is nothing so contradictory to his nature as error and falsehood.

I'm so passionately hopelessly in love with my job! I think the definition of workaholic is that you can't wait till the weekend is over so you can start working again.

The majority of a society is the true definition of the public.

Think for a moment about what Obamacare has done: The federal government has come up with its own (ever-evolving) definition of 'health insurance,' which now includes free access to sterilization, contraception, and certain abortifacients such as the morning-after pill.

Maybe we don't have the same definition of about what's beautiful. So define it. Define true beauty.

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?

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.

You can never have 'equality' between two things that are not equal by definition. And so, for example, you can have equality among 'people', but not between 'men' and 'women'.

I have kept diaries, of course, but they can't be read for quite a long time. I'm always curious about people who are fascinated by writers' lives. It seems to me that we're always in our books, quite nakedly. I wonder, too, does the private life really matter? Who cares what is known about you and what isn't? Even when you make public something that's been private, most people don't get it - not unless they're the same generation and have gone through more or less the same experiences. So, in a sense, we're all private, by definition.

I guess I'm attracted to more archaic words because they can be imbued with more meaning, because their definition is elusive.

A battery by definition is a collection of cells. So the cell is a little can of chemicals. And the challenge is taking a very high-energy cell, and a large number of them, and combining them safely into a large battery.

Young people refuse the notion that financialization defines the only acceptable definition of exchange, one that is based exclusively on the reductionist notion of buying and selling.

'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth

Liberty, according to my metaphysics, is an intellectual quality, an attribute that belongs not to fate nor chance. Neither possesses it, neither is capable of it. There is nothing moral or immoral in the idea of it. The definition of it is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power; it can elect between objects, indifferent in point of morality, neither morally good nor morally evil.