Quotes About Definitions

life science) definitions. The question that runs through these disputatio is the following: What if "horror" has less to do with a fear of death, and more to do with the dread of life?

Oddly enough, Tootsie Rolls and Tootsie Pops aren't classified as chocolate under the definitions federal officials use when collecting data on the candy industry.

One never learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her -- is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil? It is at the very least a question of definitions.

I will raise up prophets to make conflicting pronouncements that inevitably will be garbled in transcription, resulting in mutually exclusive definitions of orthodoxy from which the open-minded will flee in dismay.

In the sixteenth century in England, dictionaries such as we would recognize today simply did not exist. If the language that so inspired Shakespeare had limits, if its words had definable origins, spellings, pronunciations, meanings—then no single book existed that established them, defined them, and set them down.

To demystify the meaning of love, the art and practice of loving, we need to use sound definitions of love when talking with children, and we also need to ensure that loving action is never tainted with abuse.

is particularly distressing that so many recent books on love continue to insist that definitions of love are unnecessary and meaningless. Or worse, the authors suggest love should mean something different to men than it does to women—that the sexes should respect and adapt to our inability to communicate since we do not share the same language. This type of literature is popular because it does not demand a change in fixed ways of thinking about gender roles, culture, or love.

Q: Why bother doing proofs about programming languages? They are almost always boring if the definitions are right. A: The definitions are almost always wrong. - Anonymous

Principles are conventions and definitions in disguise.

People who are comfortable with very clear boundaries and group definitions don't like the instability and ambiguity of people who say they are more advanced Christians, or they don't have to do what the bishop says.

What alternative is there to the media's "Us" versus "Them"? The danger is that if it is used to prop up this "righteous" position of "ours" all we will see from now on are ever more exacting and minute analyses of the "dirty" distortions in "their" thinking. Without some flexibility in our definitions we'll remain forever stuck with the same old knee-jerk reactions, or worse, slide into complete apathy.

DuBois - my intellectual hero - had written an obit of Madam, praising her... I began to see Madam Walker beyond the definitions others had given her.

The singularity of the term "psychology" should not mislead one into thinking that such a discipline was ever successfully founded. Or that there is an essence to "psychology" that could encompass the various definitions, methodologies, practices, world-views, and institutions that have used this designation.

The errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning.

Yet it has 58 uses as a noun, 126 as a verb, and 10 as a participial adjective. Its meanings are so various and scattered that it takes the OED 60,000 words—the length of a short novel—to discuss them all. A foreigner could be excused for thinking that to know set is to know English.

But the polysemic champion must be set. Superficially it looks like a wholly unseeming monosyllable, the verbal equivalent of the single-celled organism. Yet it has 58 uses as a noun, 126 as a verb, and 10 as a participial adjective. Its meanings are so various and scattered that it takes the OED 60,000 words—the length of a short novel—to discuss them all.

Intuitive minds, on the contrary, being thus accustomed to judge at a single glance, are so astonished when they are presented with propositions of which they understand nothing, and the way to which is through definitions and axioms so sterile, and which they are not accustomed to see thus in detail, that they are repelled and disheartened.

The definitions of ourselves, of others and of everything that surrounds us prevent us from being and understanding who we are, keeping us prisoners of a separate reality based on definitions. We define ourselves and others incessantly with words, judgments, labels based on appearance, age, sex, race, culture, income, intelligence, character, etc. Who are you and who are others beyond their definitions? Please do not answer!

Crabbed and obscure definitions are of no use beyond a narrow circle of students, of whom probably every one has a pet one of his own.

I realize that definitions spark controversy and disagreement, but I'm okay with that. I'd rather we debate the meaning of words that are important to us than not discuss them at all.

Boarding-House Geometry DEFINITIONS AND AXIOMS All boarding-houses are the same boarding-house. Boarders in the same boarding-house and on the same flat are equal to one another. A single room is that which has no parts and no magnitude. The landlady of a boarding-house is a

For Aristotle's essentialist definitions are the principles from which all our knowledge is derived; they thus contain all our knowledge; and they serve to substitute a long formula for a short one. As opposed to this, the scientific or nominalist definitions do not contain any knowledge whatever, not even any 'opinion'; they do nothing but introduce new arbitrary shorthand labels; they cut a long story short.

Definitions have their uses in much the same way that road signs make it easy to travel: they point out the directions. But you don't get where you're going when you just stand underneath some sign, waiting for it to tell you what to do.

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