Quotes About Definition

I constantly want to know - what is a table, or what is a cat?

I am very much afraid of definitions, and yet one is almost forced to make them. One must take care, too, not to be inhibited by them.

As it defines itself, every society defines other societies. That definition almost always takes the form of a condemnation: the 'other' is the barbarian.

I think it's really hard to draw a hard-and-fast line and say 'Grimm's Fairy Tales' doesn't count as science fiction or fantasy. Or at what point do we say mythology is not fantasy, so reading mythology when you're young does not count as an exposure to fantasy?

There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.

Definition 20. If some new vertices of degree 2 are added to some of the edges of a graph G, the resulting graph H is called an expansion of G.

We carve up the world/and crown it with numbers—lumens, ounces,/decibels. All these things and what to do with them.

Watching the morning break, I realize again that darkness doesn't kill the light—it defines it.

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

Okay, compelling chase or no, you still haven't told us what a nephilopopogus is.

I have changed my definition of tragedy. I now think tragedy is not foul deeds done to a person (usually noble in some manner) but rather that tragedy is irresolvable conflict.

America is a series of river crossings; these rivers made us rich. They left the soil that has made us the breadbasket of the world, whether it's the James or the Ohio, the Mississippi or the Missouri. The great rivers define us and made transportation possible until the railroads revolutionized life in the 1830s and 1840s.

Christian is a great noun and a poor adjective.

We create these identities around our roles and titles and job descriptions and achievements. They give our lives shape and form and meaning and definition. Ever so gradually over time our understanding of ourselves gets shaped by what we do and what we've done. We cling, we grasp, we hold tightly to these identities.

English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing.

Call it that if you like. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.

Sovereign," like "love," means anything you want it to mean; it's a word in dictionary between "sober" and "sozzled.

We have been told over and over that you can't change human nature, but the study of emic realities shows quite the contrary, that almost anything can become human nature if society defines it as such.

would consider it the height of intellectual laziness and mental incompetence to invoke the word God to cover the limitations of my imagination and vocabulary. Instead, I will conclude with the wise words of Aleister Crowley. When asked to define the Tao he said, The result of subtracting the universe from itself.

According to Korzybski (Science and Sanity) there is one field, and one field only, in which it is legitimate to ascribe predicates to groups—namely, in pure mathematics. This is legitimate because the groups or sets of pure math are purely abstract and created by definition. All k are x, in a mathematical context, because k and x are defined that way, and because they do not exist outside of pure thought.

It only takes a few weeks in prison to become "a convict," whatever your definition of yourself was before, it only takes a few weeks in the Army to become a "soldier.

Labor, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B. —Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Words blur at the borders, fuzz into other words, not just in big clouds of connotation around the edges of the word, but right there in the heart of denotation itself.

La consciencia se entiende tan poco que ni siquiera puede definirse de manera apropiada. El yo es algo escurridizo, buscado con denuedo, aferrado con fuerza, quizá con algo de miedo, una especie de desesperado abrazo al primer atisbo de consciencia, consciencia incluso de las impresiones sensoriales, para que uno pueda tener algo a lo que aferrarse. Para detener el tiempo. Para contener a la muerte. Esta es la fuente del fuerte sentido del yo. Quizá.