Defining Quotes - Page 5

• It's dialogue that gives your cast their voices, and is crucial in defining their characters.

  Stephen King

  Character, Writing, Voice

  Stephen King (2002). “On Writing”, p.178, Simon and Schuster

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• Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.

  Benjamin Lee Whorf

  Writing, Language, Framework

  'Thinking in Primitive Communities' in Hoyer (ed.) 'New Directions in the Study of Language' 1964

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• ...the truer measure of sacrifice isn't so much what one gives to sacrifice as what one sacrifices to give. Faith isn't tested so much when the cupboard is full as when it is bare. In these defining moments, the crisis doesn't create one's characterit reveals it.

  Lynn G. Robbins

  Sacrifice, Giving, Defining Moments

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• Terrorism drives out all normal human activity before it, defining life in its own sick terms, if it can. So, a baseball game on a sultry Texas night before a huge crowd, with everyone feeling perfectly safe, is exactly what terrorists hate. Which is why it is so important to resume such athletic rituals - which symbolize stability, confidence and order - as soon as is reasonably possible.

  Thomas Boswell

  Sports, Baseball, Hate

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• At the heart of the WTO is an assault on everything left standing in the commons, in the public realm. Everything is now for sale. Even those areas of life that we once considered sacred like health and education, food and water and air and seeds and genes and a heritage. It is all now for sale. Economic freedom - not democracy, and not ecological stewardship - is the defining metaphor of the WTO and its central goal is humanity's mastery of the natural world through its total commodification.

  Maude Barlow

  Heart, Air, Water

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• I strongly believe that marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman. I'm troubled by activist judges who are defining marriage. I've watched carefully what's happened in San Francisco where licenses were being issued, even though the law states otherwise. I have consistently stated that I will support law to protect marriage between a man and a woman. And obviously these events are influencing my decision.

  George W. Bush

  Believe, Gay, Men

  "The Legal Argument Against Gay Marriage". "The Big Story" With John Gibson, www.foxnews.com. February 19, 2004.

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• What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

  Barack Obama

  Character, Responsibility, Giving

  First Presidential Inaugural Address, Delivered 20 January 2009

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• The journey to a different future must begin by defining the problem differently than we have done until now. . The task is not to find substitutes for chemicals that disrupt hormones, attack the ozone layer, or cause still undiscovered problems, though it may be necessary to use replacements as a temporary measure. The task that confronts us over the next half century is one of redesign.

  Theo Colborn

  Inspiring, Journey, Ozone

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• All of us cherish our beliefs. They are, to a degree, self-defining. When someone comes along who challenges our belief system as insufficiently well-based - or who, like Socrates, merely asks embarrassing questions that we haven't thought of, or demonstrates that we've swept key underlying assumptions under the rug - it becomes much more than a search for knowledge. It feels like a personal assault.

  Carl Sagan

  Love, Embarrassing Questions, Keys

  Carl Sagan (2011). “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.297, Ballantine Books

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• Comparing objects like cars, houses, clothes, and defining life according to those comparisons, instead of trying to discover the real reason for being alive.

  Paulo Coelho

  Life, Real, Clothes

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• The holistic acupuncturist and the sea turtle rescuer may not be able to explain the feeling, 'We are serving the same thing,' but they are. Both are in service to an emerging story of the People that is the defining mythology of a new kind of civilization.

  Charles Eisenstein

  Turtles, Sea, Civilization

  Charles Eisenstein (2013). “The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible”, p.15, North Atlantic Books

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• At what price do we get our news? The role of economics in defining the nature of contemporary journalism has never been better explained. A valuable, important book for those of us who watch, read, or listen to the news.

  Marvin Kalb

  Book, Important, Watches

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• If we stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by who we are we can all be freer. And this is what HeforShe is about. It’s about freedom.

  Emma Watson

  Defining Ourselves, Who We Are, Ifs

  United Nations Address on Gender Equality, delivered 20 September 2014

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• I'm having a great time. I get to travel and see the world. And yeah, I'll have a family, because I don't want to miss out on that amazing experience, but it's not defining who I am.

  Krysten Ritter

  Who I Am, Missing, World

  "Krysten Ritter: Master Pool Shark". Interview with Ashley Terrill, www.elle.com. April 13, 2012.

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• Defining the terms of the debate generally dictates who's gonna' win it.

  Paul Begala

  Winning, Debate, Term

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• I dont think gender is aesthetically defining for me.

  Suzanne Vega

  Thinking, Gender

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• I want to live the next chapter in my life without my lips as my defining characteristic.

  Lisa Rinna

  Next Chapter, Lips, Want

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• Being a twin, and being my sister's twin, is such a defining part of my life that I wouldn't know how to be who I am, including a writer, without that being somehow at the centre.

  Taiye Selasi

  Who I Am, Twins, My Sister

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• A defining moment in my life was my first actual VMA performance… That was the first time in my head I said I made it. Everybody knows who you are now. At that point everything in my life was flawless… I was just overwhelmed, I was happy, I was successful as an artist. I think I was in cruise control – like a little bit of bliss.

  Chris Brown

  Successful, Artist, Thinking

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• The defining challenge of the 21st century will be to face the reality that humanity shares a common fate on a crowded planet.

  Jeffrey Sachs

  Fate, Reality, Challenges

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• Futility is the defining characteristic of life.

  Stephen R. Donaldson

  Futility Of Life, Characteristics, Futility

  Stephen R. Donaldson (2012). “Lord Foul's Bane”, p.20, Del Rey

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• I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went o r you didn't, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.

  Linda Grant

  Depression, War, Decision

  Linda Grant (1991). “Blind Trust”, Fawcett Books

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• Racism and sexism are not "problems" or "topics." They are ways of defining reality and living our lives that most of us learned along with learning how to tie our shoes and how to drink from a cup.

  Paula Rothenberg

  Reality, Ties, Shoes

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• Today the story is no less attitude-adjusting. It is about the defining cultural, social and political issue of our age. It is about human transformation.

  Joel Garreau

  Attitude, Issues, Political

  Joel Garreau (2005). “Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human”, p.11, Broadway Books

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• It's never been true, not anywhere at any time, that the value of a soul, of a human spirit, is dependent on a number on a scale. We are unrepeatable beings of light and space and water who need these physical vehicles to get around. When we start defining ourselves by that which can be measured or weighed, something deep within us rebels. We don't want to EAT hot fudge sundaes as much as we want our lives to BE hot fudge sundaes. We want to come home to ourselves.

  Geneen Roth

  Inspiring, Home, Journey

  FaceBook post by Geneen Roth from May 12, 2014

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