Quotes about Definition

Our scientific age demands that we provide definitions, measurements, and statistics in order to be taken seriously. Yet most of the important things in life cannot be precisely defined or measured. Can we define or measure love, beauty, friendship, or decency, for example?

Servanthood does not nullify leadership; it defines it. Jesus does not cease to be the Lion of Judah when He becomes the lamblike servant of the church.

My definition of mythology is other people's religion, which suggests that ours must be something else. My definition of religion, then, is misunderstood mythology — and the misunderstanding consists in mistaking the symbol for the reference. So all the historic events that are so important to us in our tradition should not be important to us in any way except as symbols of power within ourselves.

You changed the definition of a myth from the search for meaning to the experience of meaning. CAMPBELL: Experience of life.

Life is our dictionary

Patriots can flourish only where boundaries are well-defined, hostile, and dangerous.

To look is a territorial activity. It is to observe one thing after another within a bounded space-as though in time it can all be seen. Academic fields are such territories. Sometimes everything in a field finally does get looked at and defined-that is, placed in its proper location. Mechanics and rhetoric are such fields. Physics may prove to be. Biological mysteries fall away at an astonishing rate. It becomes increasingly difficult to find something new to look at.

Truth by definition excludes.

To kick off a merchant is to censor ideas and interfere with the free exchange of products at the core of commerce. When we kick off a merchant, we're asserting our own moral code as the superior one. But who gets to define that moral code?

For all of higher civilization's recorded history, becoming a man was defined overwhelmingly as taking responsibility for a family.

No good government but what is republican... the very definition of a republic is 'an empire of laws, and not of men.'

To take a single step beyond the boundaries specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to definition.