Quotes on Definitions

What is your personal definition of "good"? _x000D_ _x000D_ A world in which everyone is universally empathetic and exercises love and respect with full change-making power.

When a truth is necessary, the reason for it can be found by analysis, that is, by resolving it into simpler ideas and truths until the primary ones are reached. It is this way that in mathematics speculative theorems and practical canons are reduced by analysis to definitions, axioms and postulates.

I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them.

In general I don't like definitions, but 'Minimalist' is a term that means elegance and openness, so I would prefer to be called a Minimalist than something else.

The world has never had a good definition_x000D_ of the word liberty

The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true. The specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.

The fundamental principle of science, the definition almost, is this: the _x000D_ sole test of the validity of any idea is experiment.

My definition of success? The more you are actively and practically engaged, the more successful you will feel.

Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

Any definition which limits us is deplorable.

What is my definition of jazz? "Safe sex of the highest order."

I have been to this point unwilling to sign on to same-sex marriage primarily because of my understandings of the traditional definitions of marriage. But I also think you're right that attitudes evolve, including mine.

To the Christian, love is the works of love. To say that love is a feeling or anything of the kind is an unchristian conception of love. That is the aesthetic definition and therefore fits the erotic and everything of that nature. But to the Christian love is the works of love. Christ's love was not an inner feeling, a full heart and what not, it was the work of love which was his life.

It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain.

I was indeed a snob, if you agree with this definition: 'A person who believes that their tastes in a particular area are superior to those of other people.' I do believe that. Not superior to all other people, but to some, most probably including those who think Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen is a great film. That is not simply ego on my part. It is a faith that after writing and teaching about films for more than 40 years, my tastes are more evolved than those of a fanboy.

The chief problem in historical honesty is not outright lying. It is omission or de-emphasis of important data. The definition of 'important', of course, depends on one's values.

With pop stars or film stars, we become the object of people's self-definition, as well as the object of sexual definition.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

I wouldn’t want to be labelled unless it was something much broader and inclusive such as an ecological artist or a visionary artist, but there’s a constraint in the definition of a feminist artist, you’re an artist and you’re a feminist.

Because it fulfills yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life's momentous acts of self-definition.

Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand. The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength; and the power of directing and employing the common strength, forms a usual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority.