Quotes About Definition

What we can see determines what we choose. Good is the distant source of light, it is the unimaginable object of our desire. Our fallen nature knows only its name and its perfection. That is the idea which is vulgarized by existentialists and linguistic philosophers when they make good into a mere matter of personal choice. It cannot be defined, not because it is a function of our freedom, but because we do not know it.

Logical but not reasonable. Wasn't that the definition of a robot?

A simple aspect of science may be defined as one which, through good fortune, I happen to understand.

Why not? You and I are eccentrics. We're certainly not typical of the people living on Terminus. As for criminals, that's a matter of definition. And if criminals are the price we must pay for rebels, heretics, and geniuses, I'm willing to pay it. I demand the price be paid.

To those who ask what the infinitely small quantity in mathematics is, we answer that it is actually zero. Hence there are not so many mysteries hidden in this concept as they are usually believed to be.

Zombie purists don't even call our zombies zombies, because to be a zombie you have to be undead. That's something zombie purists can fight about for years and years to come.

The story seems to be that almost every star has a planetary system... and, also, the definition of 'habitable zone' has expanded. In our system, it used to be that only Mars and Earth were potentially habitable. Now we've got an ocean on Europa... Titan.

The human race is a zone of living things that should be defined by tracing its confines.

In the U.K. - correct me if I'm wrong - there is a legal definition of 'not being in possession of yourself' aka 'not being a person.' That's the fun thing: someone such as a lawyer needs to define, using some empirical signal, something supposedly transcendental like 'person,' something lawyers argue and argue about regarding, say, chimps in zoos.

Personally, I think any more than two or three kids is not a family, it's a litter.

A lexicographer, a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.

The responsibility of a dictionary is to record a language, not set its style.

The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.

A dictionary should be descriptive, not prescriptive.

Dictionaries are like watches. The worst is better than none at all and even the best cannot be expected to run quite true.

The best definition of humour I know is: humour may be defined as the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life, and the artistic expression thereof. I think this is the best I know because I wrote it myself.

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

What I like about prose poems is that they seem to make people uncomfortable - people want to define them, justify them, attack them. Prose poems are natural fence-sitters.

it was a person's choices that defined his or her identity and not the other way around.

I certainly did not know what the word 'socialism' meant growing up, because I was brought up in a very nonpolitical family. My brother was somewhat active, but my parents were not.

The resistance will be exclusively conducted by only one group. This new group will be defined soon by me.

The word 'living' has so many connotations that I'm almost reluctant to try to define it scientifically because it sounds as if I'm then downgrading all the other significances of that word.

I describe my works as books, but my publishers in Spain, in the United States, and elsewhere insist on calling them novels.

Loved for is based on one's perception, you can easily spend a lifetime trying to define its definition.