Quotes About Definition

Like navigation markings in unknown waters, definitions of poverty need to be distinctive and unambiguous. A definition that is not precise is as bad as no definition at all.

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.

What does success look like for you? Maybe your definition of success is too different from what the label defines as success. Perhaps your definition of success is simply being able to live off your art for the rest of your days. Don't get caught up in this crazy business. I'd say that's one of the most important things.

Having been brought up with a definition of faith as adherence to a set of beliefs, I have more and more begun to turn instead toward a definition of faith as openness to truth, whatever truth may turn out to be.

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 don't think feminism, as I understand the definition, implies the rejection of maternal values, nurturing children, caring about the men in your life. That is just nonsense to me.

The American Dream means giving it your all, trying your hardest, accomplishing something. And then I'd add to that, giving something back. No definition of a successful life can do anything but include serving others.

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.

When you say fear of the unknown, that is the definition of fear; fear is the unknown, fear is what you do not know, and its genetically within us so that we feel safe. We feel scared of the woods because were not familiar with it, and that keeps you safe.

Someone has said, “A friend is a person who is willing to take me the way I am.” Accepting this as one definition of the word, may I quickly suggest that we are something less than a real friend if we leave a person the same way we find him.

We don't consider black, urban films as 'indies,' though many of them are shot for under $10 million which is kind of the definition of an indie.

Certain issues in philosophy of science (having to do with observation and the definition of a theory's empirical import) had beenmisconstrued as issues in philosophy of logic and of language. With respect to modality, I hold the exact opposite: important philosophical problems concerning language have been misconstrued as relating to the content of science and the nature of the world. This is not at all new, but is the traditional nominalist line.

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.

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.

The only way to keep a dream, any dream at all, to keep a dream perfect and rosy and intact and unsullied is never to live it out. The moment you carry out any of your dreams or your fantasies - travel around the world, climbing a high mountain, buying a new house, writing a novel, carrying out a sexual fantasy, traveling to an unknown country - the moment you carry out your dreams, it's always, by definition less perfect and rosy than it had been as a dream. This is the nature of dreams.

In a lot of ways, the task at hand for any poem is to approach something that defies exactness or definition with a kind of exactness or precision.

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.

If you dont love, youve lost your distinction, definition, uniqueness, and identity.

Many people believe that decentralization means loss of control. That's simply not true. You can improve control if you look at control as the control of events and not people. Then, the more people you have controlling events - the more people you have that care about controlling the events, the more people you have proactively working to create favorable events - the more control you have within the organization, by definition.

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.

That is the definition of faith - acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove.

Having federal officials, whether judges, bureaucrats, or congressmen, impose a new definition of marriage on the people is an act of social engineering profoundly hostile to liberty.

My definition of learning is to remember what you are interested in. If you don't remember something, you haven't learned it, and you are never going to remember something unless you are interested in it. These words dance together. 'Interest' is another holy word and drives 'memory'. Combine them and you have learning.

If you are reading this, and feel discouraged by an inability to communicate to others your own feelings about the importance of an active space development effort, comfort yourself with this thought. If you want to be on the leading edge of anything, you have by definition to be a couple of standard deviations away from most people. That makes you an odd-ball. The trick is to learn to accept it, then to like it-and keep on making lots of noise for what you believe in.

Our task, of course, is to transmute the anger that is affliction into the anger that is determination to bring about change. I think, in fact, that one could give that as a definition of revolution.

The definition of what it means to be dying has changed radically. We are able to extend people's lives considerably, including sometimes, good days.

Ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself.

Well, I am not 100 percent sure of the definition of polemic, but it wasn't meant to convince anybody of anything.

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

I am the complete and utter definition of a Luddite.

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

Good character consists of recognizing the selfishness that inheres in each of us and trying to balance it against the altruism to which we should all aspire. It is a difficult balance to strike, but no definition of goodness can be complete without it.

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.

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.

Definition of good neighbor: someone to be trusted; a courteous, friendly source of help when help is needed; someone you can count on; someone who cares.

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.

The definition of a great picture is one that stays with you, one that you can't forget. It doesn't have to be technically good at all.

I found that life intruding on writing was, in fact, life. And that, tempting as it may be for a writer who is a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion. At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing, and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion.

I don't think there's any one definition, but to do effective political work you have to have vision and practicality, and learn how to persuade people that what you feel needs to be done does need to be done.

I would simply ask why so many critics, so many writers, so many philosophers take such satisfaction in professing that the experience of a work of art is ineffable, that it escapes by definition all rational understanding; why are they so eager to concede without a struggle the defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belittle rational understanding come from, this rage to affirm the irreducibility of the work of art, or, to use a more suitable word, its transcendence.

There is no adequate definition for creative writing, any more than it is possible to describe pain or flavor or color.

I think that as good architecture enhances a city, a good cut enhances the definition and expression of a face.

Recite to yourself some of the traditional attributes of the word 'spiritual': mythic, magical, ethereal, incorporeal, intangible, nonmaterial, disembodied, ideal, platonic. Is that not a definition of the electronic-digital?

I personally have no need to make a strict definition of the medium. I am more interested in what can be done with comics than how it can be described, and if I want to remain truly open to the creative possibilities, the less I define the medium, the better.

Let him tell us he's never been hurt, but that's the definition of getting hurt.

In politics, the definition of a real man is different from, I would say, outside Washington or outside the establishment. I don't think that's even arguable. But human nature is what it is, and men (straight men) want women. And it's always a challenge. It's never a piece of cake. You're rejected. You know Woody Allen? One funny thing he really said. Somebody said, "Woody, what has success meant?" He said, "It means being rejected by a higher class of woman." Life is filled with rejection. Men - nobody - women, they don't like rejection.

The only truly dependable production technologies are those that are sustainable over the long term. By that very definition, they must avoid erosion, pollution, environmental degradation, and resource waste. Any rational food-production system will emphasize the well-being of the soil-air-water biosphere, the creatures which inhabit it, and the human beings who depend upon it.

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.