Quotes About Definition

Puns are at their core defined by multiplicity of meaning, not necessarily humor. The common expectation that puns should always be funny, or die in the attempt, is a relatively modern development.

Dictionary: Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order.

I have thus defined the concept of the "Background" as the set of nonintentional or preintentional capacities that enable intentional states of function. But

When any human group decides that they can define God, the outcome is always predictable. The "true faith," once defined, must then be defended against all critics, and it must also then be forced upon all people—"for their own good, lest their souls be in jeopardy.

This leads to the consideration of a third great division of names, into connotative and non-connotative, the latter sometimes, but improperly, called absolute.

The second general division of names is into concrete and abstract. A concrete name is a name which stands for a thing; an abstract name is a name which stands for an attribute of a thing.

Names have been further distinguished into univocal and æquivocal: these, however, are not two kinds of names, but two different modes of employing names.

is not to be expected that there should be agreement about the definition of any thing, until there is agreement about the thing itself.

Even in ordinary conversation, the ideas connected with the word Logic include at least precision of language, and accuracy of classification: and we perhaps oftener hear persons speak of a logical arrangement, or of expressions logically defined, than of conclusions logically deduced from premises.

To define, is to select from among all the properties of a thing, those which shall be understood to be designated and declared by its name; and the properties must be well known to us before we can be competent to determine which of them are fittest to be chosen for this purpose.

Defining marriage is a power that should be left to the states. Moreover, no state should be forced to recognize a marriage that is not within its own laws, Constitution, and legal precedents.

There are more than 30 states, who either by statute or constitutional amendment, have defined marriage as being between a man and a woman.

In any conceivable method ever invented by man, an automaton which produces an object by copying a pattern, will go first from the pattern to a description to the object. It first abstracts what the thing is like, and then carries it out. It's therefore simpler not to extract from a real object its definition, but to start from the definition.

She had been so vulnerable, and Norah wanted only to protect her. But that vulnerability was tied to a massive mistake, a perception of herself too damaged to love. If Norah got anything from this book, it's that we're all damaged. The tragedy is letting it define you.

Each opinion, each view is necessarily partial, truncated, inadequate. In philosophy and in anything, originality comes down to incomplete definitions.

What right have we to be annoyed by someone who calls us a monster? The monster is unique by definition, and solitude, even the solitude of infamy, supposes something positive, a peculiar election, but undeniably an election.

Apaixonado pelos vocábulos, odiava os mistérios dos silêncios pesados e os tornava leves e puros: e ele próprio tornou-se leve e puro, já que aliviado e purificado de tudo. O vício de definir fez dele um assassino gracioso e uma vítima discreta.

No nation admits of an abstract definition; all nations are beings of many qualities and many sides; no historical event exactly illustrates any one principle; every cause is intertwined and surrounded with a hundred others.

It will not answer to explain what all the things which you describe are not. You must begin by saying what they are.

Finally I asked my friend Judy, who spent many years as a student of Sufism and who embodies fana —the self-annihilating love of God—as well as anyone I know. When I asked her to define spirituality for me, she thought for a moment and said, 'Spirituality is the active pursuit of the God you didn't make up.' I loved that. I also did not know what it meant.

Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart once said he could not define pornography, but he knew it when he saw it. Reverence is a little like that. It is difficult to define, but you know it when you feel it.

Evil was a stupid word. It had the same sort of sense, largely meaningless, amorphous, diffuse, wooly, as applied to "love." Everyone had a vague idea of what it meant but none could precisely have defined it. It seemed, in a way, to imply something supernatural.

What touched me the most about the Dalai Lama was his definition of the purpose of life. It was, he said, "to be happy." How does one accomplish that? I asked. "I think warm-heartedness and compassion," he replied. "Compassion give you inner strength, more self-confidence. That can really change your attitude.

societies define themselves by how they define and manage dangers.