Quotes About Definition

Starting with clear definitions of love, of feeling, intention and will, I no longer enter relationships with the lack of awareness that leads me to make all bonds the site for repeating old patterns.

many of us are more comfortable with the notion that love can mean anything to anybody precisely because when we define it with precision and clarity it brings us face to face with our lacks—with terrible alienation. The truth is, far too many people in our culture do not know what love is. And this not knowing feels like a terrible secret, a lack that we have to cover up.

A criterion based on adjectives is always ambiguous.

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.

A word is used correctly when the average hearer will be affected by it in the way intended. This is a psychological, not a literary, definition of correctness. The literary definition would substitute, for the average hearer, a person of high education living a long time ago; the purpose of this definition is to make it difficult to speak or write correctly.

Since all terms that are defined are defined by means of other terms, it is clear that human knowledge must always be content to accept some terms as intelligible without definition, in order to have a starting point for its definitions...[and] since human powers are finite, the definitions known to us must always begin somewhere, with terms undefined for the moment, though perhaps not permanently. - Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy

The accusation of metaphysics has become in philosophy something like the accusation of being a security risk in the public service. I do not for my part know what is meant by the word 'metaphysics'. The only definition I have found that fits all cases is: 'a philosophical opinion not held by the present author'.

What the above argument amounts to is that, whatever else may be in perpetual flux, the meanings of words must be fixed, at least for a time, since otherwise no assertion is definite, and no assertion is true rather than false. There must be something more or less constant, if discourse and knowledge are to be possible.

These two sentences suffice to show, as I shall try to prove, that Bergson does not know what number is, and has himself no clear idea of it.

The number 0 is the number of terms in a class which has no members, i.e. in the class which is called the null-class.

0 is the class whose only member is the null-class.

It remains to define successor. Given any number n, let ? be a class which has n members, and let x be a term which is not a member of ?. Then the class consisting of ? with x added on will have n+1 members.

The key to our problem lies in mathematical induction. It will be remembered that, in Chapter I., this was the fifth of the five primitive propositions which we laid down about the natural numbers. It stated that any property which belongs to 0, and to the successor of any number which has the property, belongs to all the natural numbers. This was then presented as a principle, but we shall now adopt it as a definition.

is clear that human knowledge must always be content to accept some terms as intelligible without definition

I refuse to accept Pluto's resignation as a planet.

I always get sick of these conversations where people are so obsessed with pixels, with high definition, and even with technology in general. I find it just dull and heartless. And so I wanted to use only the worst machines.

I don't think, as an actor, you should define what genre you want to do. Once you do that, you lose the sight to see the film and what its story is all about.

TERRITORY VERSUS HIERARCHY In the animal kingdom, individuals define themselves in one of two ways — by their rank within a hierarchy (a hen in a pecking order, a wolf in a pack) or by their connection to a territory (a home base, a hunting ground, a turf).

What is a tramp anyway? Dave explained: A tramp is an itinerant worker. A hobo is an itinerant non-worker. A bum is a non-itinerant non-worker.

The term 'love' was defined in an authoritative dictionary of psychology as 'a form of mental illness not yet recognised in the standard diagnostic manuals'.

As it is, we could not call mine a beautiful puss, but it does the job well enough, distinguishing the front of my head from the back.

To name is to define and shape reality.

thought, If I'd been born male, dear God! the things I could have done! I longed for parity with men, the freedom and choices of men, the ability to quest without worrying about who would cook dinner or pick up the children. I longed for the power men had to name the world, for the world had been largely male defined. Even God "himself" was defined by men and envisioned in their image.

You speak as if God was white and Southern! As if we somehow owned his image. You speak like a fool. The Negro is not some other kind of creature than we are. Whiteness is not sacred, Mary! It can't go on defining everything.