Quotes About Definition

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.

I don’t have a definition of God, because I’ve never really understood that word. People have different understandings of it and it’s caused a great deal of conflict. If I had to say what would my definition of God be, if I were going to use that word, I would say that this universe has layers upon layers upon layers of compassion and wisdom beyond ours.

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.

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.

The definition of an asshole is someone who doesn't believe what he is seeing.

Allow me to offer a simple definition of wisdom. Wisdom is looking at life from God's point of view.

Curiosity and irreverence go together. Curiosity cannot exist without the other. Curiosity asks, "Is this true?" "Just because this has always been the way, is the best or right way of life, the best or right religion, political or economic value, morality?" To the questioner, nothing is sacred. He detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality, rebels against any repression of a free, open search of ideas no matter where they may lead. He is challenging, insulting, agitating, discrediting. He stirs unrest.

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.

By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be.

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.

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.

If your definition of homosexuality is being able to do whatever you want to, and that you should be able to go and engage in sex with another person, and that because of that, the disease you have is going to spread to that person and they're going to take it home and give it to their wife, how much tolerance should we have for that? We should have zero tolerance for that.

Maybe the best definition of what a great partnership or great love is when people make each other grow in a better direction than they would have grown on their own.

That seems to be the definition of 'novel' for me: a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.

My definition of likeable may be different from other people's. That's not traditional likeable. Sympathy is a different thing [to define it].

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

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.

The question of the family now divides our society so deeply that the opposing sides cannot even agree on a definition of the institution they are arguing about.

Under capitalism, we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control.

I'm trying to accept the idea that there's a different definition of what matters now. The rating for James Corden at 12:30 at night doesn't matter as much as the number of hits he gets on YouTube when he goes driving around with Adele. There are old dogs out there doing new tricks, and I got to recognize them.

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.

The essence of man is imperfection. Failure is simply a price we pay to achieve success. If we learn to embrace that new definition of failure, then we are free to start moving ahead - and failing forward.

Selfish people are, by definition, those whose activities are devoted to bringing themselves happiness. Yet. . . these selfish people are far less likely to be happy than those whose efforts are devoted to making others happy.

Continuing to believe the same thing, even in the face of new evidence to the contrary, is the definition of insanity - except in politics where it's called leadership.

But at the beginning, our definition of the genocide was what happened to Armenia in 1917 or 1919, it's happened to the Jew in Europe, and we were not realizing - In our point of view, they have not the tools to do a genocide.

Supreme Court says pornography is anything without artistic merit that causes sexual thoughts, that's their definition, essentially. No artistic merit, causes sexual thoughts. Hmm... Sounds like... every commercial on television, doesn't it? You know, when I see those two twins on that Doublemint commercial? I'm not thinking of gum. I am thinking of chewing, so maybe that's the connection they're trying to make.

How come all the harmless people were so lame? Maybe that was the definition of safe.

An education program is, by definition, a societal program. Work should be done at school, rather than at home.

I am the complete and utter definition of a Luddite.

I want the definition of startup back. To be used by anybody who is willing to take the risk to quit their corporate job and go out and try and build an innovative, disruptive, tech-enabled business that tries to change the way things work in the world.

The definition of success is getting many of the things money can buy and all the things money can't buy.

The definition of disappointment in life is expectations minus reality equals disappointment. The only two solutions you have to get over disappointment is to either alter your reality or alter your expectations.

A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.

No one can give a definition of the soul. But we know what it feels like. The soul is the sense of something higher than ourselves, something that stirs in us thoughts, hopes, and aspirations which go out to the world of goodness, truth and beauty. The soul is a burning desire to breathe in this world of light and never to lose it--to remain children of light.

Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?

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.

While an artist can choose whether or not to be responsive and responsible towards other human beings, by definition a designer must be.

I'm the definition of half man, half drugs.

I do know without fear of contradiction what the definition of life is and it is 12 words long. 'Life is defined by how much you improve the lives of others.'

In this society, the norm of masculinity is phallic aggression. Male sexuality is, by definition, intensely and rigidly phallic. A man's identity is located in his conception of himself as the possessor of a phallus; a man's worth is located in his pride in phallic identity. The main characteristic of phallic identity is that worth is entirely contingent on the possession of a phallus. Since men have no other criteria for worth, no other notion of identity, those who do not have phalluses are not recognized as fully human.

One dictionary defines denouement as "a final part in which everything is made clear and no questions or surprises remain." By that definition, it is exactly the wrong word to describe this chapter. This chapter will make nothing clear; it will raise many questions; and it may even contain a surprise or two. But I say we call it the denouement anyway because the words sounds so sophisticated and French.

Is that a good definition of marking the ageing watershed? That moment when you realize - quite rationally, quite unemotionally - that the world in the not-so-distant future will not contain you: that the trees you planted will continue growing but you will not be there to see them.

A one sentence definition of mythology? Mythology is what we call someone else's religion.

When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique. He is universal by virtue of the inseparability of his organism from the cosmos. He is unique in that he is just this organism and not any stereotype of role, class, or identity assumed for the convenience of social communication.

[Democrats] have got to start winning elections. That involves not some great idea, but it also involves recruiting candidates. And Rahm Emanuel, the mayor of Chicago, who has given obnoxiousness a new definition in his personal behavior, oftentimes in his dealings with the press, had a very good point.

To totalitarianism, an opponent is by definition subversive; democracy treats subversives as mere opponents for fear of betraying its principles.

The standard definition of AI is that which we don't understand.