Quotes About Definitions

Here's the point to be made - there are no synonyms. There are no two words that mean exactly the same thing.

I work with the Oxford Dictionary databases, which sounds really boring, but they're actually fascinating as they show you how current words are being used.

The primary problem with idolatry is not that it falsely claims to have a connection with God but rather that it falsely claims to understand the God that it is connected to. Yet this does not mean that our definitions of God are somehow unimportant – indeed, they remain vital – it is only that we must recognize the extent to which these reflections fall short of that which they attempt to define and always reflect something of the one who makes the claims.

Through a voluntary national certification program, SAFLA will create uniform rules and definitions for foods carrying a GMO-free label, allowing consumers to understand and identify those products that fit their food preferences.

One of the more obvious differences between modern humans is skin color. We make crude visual distinctions and effectively meaningless categorizations based on average skin tones, such as black or white. The question of race is explored in depth in Chapter 5, and I will explain why geneticists ascribe no scientific value to these broad racial attempts at definitions of peoples.

Biology is the study of what lives and therefore what dies. It's messy—wonderfully, frustratingly so—and imprecise and defies definitions.

no such concepts can have definitions: they only have histories. But if they only have histories, then the only way to understand them is historically ? and that is what animates my work, the belief that if we are going to understand any of the concepts we use to organise our social, moral, and political world, we shall have to study them historically

A radical does not mean a man who lives on radishes," remarked Crook, with some impatience; "and a Conservative does not mean a man who preserves jam. Neither, I assure you, does a Socialist mean a man who desires a social evening with the chimney-sweep. A Socialist means a man who wants all the chimneys swept and all the chimney-sweeps paid for it.

There's an important difference and distinction between the objective medical fact of my being an amputee and the subjective societal opinion of whether or not I'm disabled. Truthfully, the only real and consistent disability I've had to confront is the world ever thinking that I could be described by those definitions.

The images of peace are ephemeral. The language of peace is subtle. The reasons for peace, the definitions of peace, the very idea of peace have to be invented, and invented again

Logic issues in tautologies, mathematics in identities, philosophy in definitions; all trivial, but all part of the vital work of clarifying and organising our thought.

Definitions are the guardians of rationality, the first line of defense against the chaos of mental disintegration.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry that is prose - words in their best order poetry - the best words in their best order.

Definitions would be good things if we did not use words to make them.

If a word in the dictionary were mispelled, how would we know?

Peanuts aren't nuts. Whales aren't fish. Tomatoes aren't vegetables. And attributions, judgments, and accusations aren't feelings.

The "trick" is to develop formal mathematical definitions that have known graph theoretic properties, and also capture important intuitive and theoretical aspects of cohesive subgroups.

It is good to know and use the DSM definitions, but not to reify or worship them.31,32

Mike puts us into trance, pours language - definitions, idioms, concepts - into us for moments that feel like hours... then we dictate at once what he has poured into us, while it's still fresh. But it can't be just anybody. It requires a sharp accent and the ability to join trance rapport and then spill out the results. Sam, for example, has everything but the accent - he manages, God knows how, to speak Martian with a Bronx accent. Can't use him, it would cause endless errata.

There are innumerable definitions of God because his manifestations are innumerable.

A major gap between many of the denominations stems from how people define some of the most basic terms, such as 'religion' itself.

humans suffer from insufficient data, from faulty programming (genetic and cultural), from muddled definitions, and from the chaos of life.

In Hollywood films everything is tidied up at the end with clean lines and clean character definitions. It's sort of unsatisfying.

The differences between a tart, a pie and a quiche are a blur.