Quotes About Definition

A definition is death. A definition is the answer to which you must look up the question in the back of your book.

In this statement, my Scipio, I build on your own admirable definition, that there can be no community, properly so called, unless it be regulated by a combination of rights. And by this definition it appears that a multitude of men may be just as tyrannical as a single despot and indeed this is the most odious of all tyrannies, since no monster can be more barbarous than the mob, which assumes the name and mask of the people.

But this cheap-thrill version, this sort of ease definition, the feel-good definition of happiness is an empty promise. Unless we get wiser as to how to carry the difficulties of life in a way that's self-compassionate and empowering, we can create this kind of world in which we'd rather sort of plug into the matrix with whatever pills or escapist tendencies we can think of instead of walking through a process of living that's going to include loss. It's going to include limitations on function. We need to learn and teach our children how to do that.

Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue.

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.

We want to do something and a definition is a means of doing it. If we want certain results then we must use certain meanings or definitions. But no definition has any authority apart from a purpose, or to bar us from other purposes.

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.

Any trade that is voluntarily made is mutually beneficial, by definition, and, indeed, is balanced, by definition.

[Cities] are not like suburbs, only denser. They differ from towns and suburbs in basic ways, and one of these is that cities are, by definition, full of strangers.

My definition of love is being full. Complete. It makes everything lighter. Beauty is something you see. Love is something you feel.

The excitement of life is in the numinous experience wherein we are given to each other in that larger celebration of existence in which all things attain their highest expression, for the universe, by definition, is a single gorgeous celebratory event.

The beauty of Goodreads is that you know you’re sowing in a field where everyone, by definition and self-selection, loves to read.

I'm sorry, could you please tell me what the definition of the word "is" is?

Since the photographic medium has been digitized, a fixed definition of the term photography has become impossible.

My attitude to peace is rather based on the Burmese definition of peace - it really means removing all the negative factors that destroy peace in this world. So peace does not mean just putting an end to violence or to war, but to all other factors that threaten peace, such as discrimination, such as inequality, poverty.

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.

I have a suspicion that the definition of "crazy" in show business is a woman who keeps talking even after no one wants to f*** [sleep with her] anymore.

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

Everything about the enterprise, and then by definition the software the enterprise uses has changed - just in the last 5 years.

Families hold each other in an iron grip of definition. One must break the grip, somehow.

At one point, I worked up a list of five requirements for a superhero: superpowers, a costume, a code name, a mission, and a milieu. If the character had three out of the five, they were a superhero. But that's just my definition.

This definition about against their will, that's a made up term. Did any of those little kids say I didn't want to come here? Did they say I was brought here against my will? Some of them were walking across the border on their own, lots of them, and we'll see them coming across every day at McCallum, Texas. They're still pouring across the border. They know what they're doing. It's not against their will.

The most important definition of an actor, the job of the actor, is to serve the writer, not yourself. Way too many actors serve themselves.

They say the definition of ambivalence is watching your mother-in-law drive over a cliff in your new Cadillac.

I love Iain Murray's definition of worldliness: towards the end of Evangelicalism Divided, he says that worldliness consists of loving idols and being at war with God. I think that's true in the lives of too many professing Christians today.

I think the commercial culture, and also science and technology after all, which gives us greater ease but also makes it harder for us to sit with the small amounts of distress that come just by living itself. It isn't that we're chasing happiness; I think we have the wrong model of happiness. I mean, defined as eudaimonia, defined as a values-based life of integrity and fidelity to yourself and what you most deeply want to stand for, that definition of happiness - man, that's the kind of life I want to live and I think that will support people and sustain people.

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

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would ... [be] the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

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.

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.

The single definition of government I've ever seen that makes sense is that it's the organization which claims the right to kill people who won't do what it wants.

Disagreement produces debate but dissent produces dissension. Dissent (which come from the Latin, dis and sentire) means originally to feel apart from others. People who disagree have an argument, but people who dissent have a quarrel. People may disagree and both may count themselves in the majority. But a person who dissents is by definition in a minority. A liberal society thrives on disagreement but is killed by dissension. Disagreement is the life blood of democracy, dissension is its cancer.

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

One would expect that private property taken by eminent domain would become land available for public use such as parks and roads. Unfortunately, this decision creates a loophole for government to manipulate the definition of public use simply to generate greater tax revenue.

As children in the seventies we were told about nebulous 'strangers'. By definition, we didn't know who these strangers were, and we didn't know what they wanted to do, but only that they were sinister. I think that was the stage the seventies were at.

It is said that life begins when the fetus can exist apart from its mother. By this definition, many people in Hollywood are legally dead.

We hear a lot about identity theft when someone takes your wallet and pretends to be you and uses your credit cards. But the more serious identity theft is to get swallowed up in other people's definition of you.

But when you have to deal with notes, and to be able to make a full definition of what a sound is - if you are not around that environment, then you'll find you lose that feel, that momentum, you lose all that.

AB de Villiers is the definition of a Cricketing Genius

I am the complete and utter definition of a Luddite.

I think people have different definitions of team unity. My definition is doing whatever it takes to win, what makes a great team; it's performance on the field, respect on the field.

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.

The over-all point is that new technology will not necessarily replace old technology, but it will date it. By definition. Eventually, it will replace it. But it's like people who had black-and-white TVs when color came out. They eventually decided whether or not the new technology was worth the investment.

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.

The court's injected itself in the definition of marriage, deciding whether or not human life is worth protecting, permitting government to transfer private property from one person to another, even interpreting the Constitution on the basis of foreign and international laws.

By definition, memoir demands a certain degree of introspection and self-disclosure: In order to fully engage a reader, the narrator has to make herself known, has to allow her own self-awareness to inform the events she describes.

"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.

When a man does not live with his children and does not get along with the mother of his children, his fatherhood becomes essentially untenable, regardless of how he feels, how hard he tries, or whether he is a good guy. Almost by definition, he has become de-fathered.