Definitions Quotes - Page 31

• There are many people like me who believe firmly, if somewhat incoherently, that pockets on this planet are filled with what humans have left behind them, both good and evil, and that any such spiritual accumulation can stay there forever, past definition of such a stern word.

  M. F. K. Fisher

  Spiritual, Believe, Past

  M.F.K. Fisher (2011). “Two Towns in Provence”, Vintage

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• ... life, by definition, is never still.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Life, Still Life, Stills

  Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Bluebeard: A Novel”, p.90, Dial Press

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• What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Genius, Judgment, Eternity

  "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook E 92, 1799.

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• If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet. A majority by definition, society thinks of itself as having other options than reading verses, no matter how well written. Its failure to do so results in its sinking to that level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant. This is society's own equivalent of oblivion.

  Joseph Brodsky

  Fall, Reading, Writing

  "Less Than One: Selected Essays".

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• The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work.

  Agha Hasan Abedi

  Inspirational, Real, Work

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• ... the socialization of boys regarding masculinity is often at the expense of women. I came to realize that we don't raise boys to be men, we raise them not be women (or gay men). We teach boys that girls and women are "less than" and that leads to violence by some and silence by many. It's important for men to stand up to not only stop men's violence against women but, to teach young men a broader definition of masculinity that includes being empathetic, loving and non-violent.

  Don McPherson

  Girl, Powerful, Gay

  Interview with Jeff Pearlman, www.jeffpearlman.com. April 21, 2011.

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• Fairness' is one of the great mantras of the left. Since everyone has his own definition of fairness, that word is a blank check for the expansion of government power. What fairness means in practice is that third parties -- busybodies -- can prevent mutual accommodations by others.

  Thomas Sowell

  Party, Mean, Equality

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Ever Wonder Why?: and Other Controversial Essays”, p.225, Hoover Press

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• We are living in a period in which many people have changed their mind about what the use of music is or could be for them. Something that doesn't speak or talk like a human being, that doesn't know its definition in the dictionary or its theory in the schools, that expresses itself simply by the fact of its vibrations. People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is.

  John Cage

  Music, School, Two

  "Autobiographical Statement". www.johncage.org. April 1990.

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• Sex cannot be contained within a definition of physical pleasure, it cannot be understood as merely itself for it has stood for too long as a profound connection between human beings.

  Elizabeth Janeway

  Sex, Long, Profound

  Elizabeth Janeway (1974). “Between Myth and Morning: Women Awakening”, New York : Morrow, 1974, 1975 printing.

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• The 2.4 million bright, brave, incredibly fit and remarkably talented young Americans who have served in our armed forces since we were attacked on 9-11-01 are all volunteers. As General Petraeus put it during a conversation we had in Afghanistan, 'They all came or stayed, knowing they were going to war.' For more than a decade, these patriots and their loved ones have made extraordinary sacrifices for this country. They embody the classical definition of heroes: those who put themselves at risk for the benefit of others.

  Oliver North

  Country, Veterans Day, War

  "The Heroes of 2011" by Oliver North, www.foxnews.com. November 11, 2011.

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• The human mind is so complex and things are so tangled up with each other that, to explain a blade of straw, one would have to take to pieces an entire universe. A definition is a sack of flour compressed into a thimble.

  Remy de Gourmont

  Tangled, Perception, Mind

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• One would expect that private property taken by eminent domain would become land available for public use such as parks and roads. Unfortunately, this decision creates a loophole for government to manipulate the definition of public use simply to generate greater tax revenue.

  Jim Ryun

  Taken, Government, Land

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• I have heard Science Fiction and Fantasy referred to as the fiction of ideas, and I like that definition, but it's the mainstream public that chooses my books for the most part.

  Jean M. Auel

  Book, Ideas, Fiction

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• But once you publish a book, doesn’t it by definition become the realm of public discourse? Otherwise, wouldn’t we just write books and print them out ourselves, and give them to specific people we felt comfortable giving them to–like gifts? Isn’t publishing sort of a social contract?

  Jonathan Evison

  Book, Writing, People

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• Michael Giles the first drummer of King Crimson, never agreed to the name King Crimson. But then, if you'd knew Michael, you would know he didn't agree to the album cover either. So maybe Michael didn't agree to the point of definition with many things.

  Robert Fripp

  Kings, Names, Firsts

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• There have been many definitions of beauty in art. What is it? Beauty is what the untrained eyes consider abominable.

  Edmond de Goncourt

  Beauty, Art, Eye

  Statement on February 17, 1859. "Pages from the Goncourt Journal". Book by Edmond de Goncourt, translated by Robert Baldick, p. 40, 1962.

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• My tact is that you don't change the definition of marriage for one group, homosexuals, because you have to change it for all the groups. So you don't do it, particularly if people in California vote on it, don't want it, they think that the heterosexuality is a societal stabilizer.

  Bill O'Reilly

  Gay, Thinking, Heterosexuality Is

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• Were an Asiatic to ask me for a definition of Europe, I should be forced to answer him: It is that part of the world which is haunted by the incredible delusion that man was created out of nothing, and that his present birth is his first entrance into life.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Men, Europe, Answers

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• Under capitalism, we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control.

  Noam Chomsky

  Democracy, Principles, Institutions

  Noam Chomsky (2004). “Language and Politics”, p.138, AK Press

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• The danger of tautological propositions is considerable in discussions of the concept of normal profits. Because supernormal profits seem to invite newcomers to an industry and sub-normal profits seem to drive away those who are in an industry, some writers are inclined to define normal profits as the earnings of the fixed resources in an industry which neither grows nor declines in size or number of firms. It should be clear that such a definition is useless: it muddles together attractiveness and actual afflux, desirbility of entry and ease of entry, zero profits and monopoly rents.

  Fritz Machlup

  Zero, Numbers, Together

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• The timing & characteristics of state intervention affect not only organizational tactics and strategies, but the content and definition of interest itself... Some scholars have directly stressed that state interventions create corporatist forms... the formation, let alone the political capabilities, of such purely socioeconomic phenomena as interest groups and classes depends in significant measure on the structures and activities of the very states the social actors, in turn, seek to influence.

  Theda Skocpol

  Philosophy, Class, Political

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• Failing to warn the citizens of a looming weapon of mass destruction- and that's what global warming is- in order to protect oil company profits, well, that fits for me the definition of treason.

  Bill Maher

  Mass Destruction, Order, Oil

  "Real Time" with Bill Maher, votesmart.org. March 24, 2006.

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• The concentrating of powers in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Government, Hands, Tyranny

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia II, Correspondence 1782-1786”, p.20, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The mission of the Gestapo expanded steadily as from 1933 onward, "political criminality" was given a much broader definition than ever before and more forms of dissent and criticism were gradually criminalized. The result was that more "laws" or law-like measures were put on the books than ever.

  Sheila Fitzpatrick

  Book, Law, Political

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• An executive is a person who always decides; sometimes he decides correctly, but he always decides.

  John Henry Patterson

  Sometimes, Executives, Persons

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