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1 " I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I'd invented it, because it is very true. "
― Audrey Hepburn
2 " Paranormalists, however, insist that our minds are transmitters that, with special effort, can focus like lasers to communicate across great distances, and even make things happen. That may seem far-fetched, but it's also a definition of prayer. "
― Alan Weisman , The World Without Us
3 " If there's a definition of freedom, I think it's this: living life on your terms. "
― Kamal Ravikant , Live Your Truth
4 " A label locks me into a definition that people use to control me. A vision graces me with an idea that serves to release me. "
― Craig D. Lounsbrough
5 " I remembered a definition of chivalry I'd heard once: a man protecting a woman against every man but himself. "
― James Anderson , The Never-Open Desert Diner (Ben Jones, #1)
6 " We must consider also whether soul is divisible or is without parts, and whether it is everywhere homogeneous or not; and if not homogeneous, whether its various forms are different specifically or generically; up to the present time those who have discussed and investigated soul seem to have confined themselves to the human soul. We must be careful not to ignore the question whether soul can be defined in a single account, as is the case with animal, or whether we must not give a separate account of each sort of it, as we do for horse, dog, man, god (in the latter case the universal, animal—and so too every other common predicate—is either nothing or posterior). Further, if what exists is not a plurality of souls, but a plurality of parts of one soul, which ought we to investigate first, the whole soul or its parts? It is also a difficult problem to decide which of these parts are in nature distinct from one another. Again, which ought we to investigate first, these parts or their functions, mind or thinking, the faculty or the act of sensation, and so on? If the investigation of the functions precedes that of the parts, the further question suggests itself: ought we not before either to consider the correlative objects, e.g. of sense or thought? It seems not only useful for the discovery of the causes of the incidental proprieties of substances to be acquainted with the essential nature of those substances (as in mathematics it is useful for the understanding of the property of the equality of the interior angles of a triangle to two right angles to know the essential nature of the straight and the curved or of the line and (the plane) but also conversely, for the knowledge of the essential nature of a substance is largely promoted by an acquaintance with its properties: for, when we are able to give an account conformable to experience of all or most of the properties of a substance, we shall be in the most favourable position to say something worth saying about the essential nature of that subject: in all demonstration a definition of the essence is required as a starting point, so that definitions which do not enable us to discover the incidental properties, or which fail to facilitate even a conjecture about them, must obviously, one and all, be dialectical and futile." —from_On the Soul: Book I_ "
7 " I have a definition of success. For me, it's very simple. It's not about wealth and fame and power. It's about how many shining eyes I have around me. "
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8 " Happiness. We're tearing our hair out to try to find a definition of it, for heaven's sake. Is it joy? People will tell you that it isn't, that joy is a fleeting emotion, a moment of happiness, which is always welcome, mind you. And then what about pleasure, huh? Oh, yes, that's easy, everybody knows what that is, but there again it doesn't last. But is happiness not the sum total of lots of small joys and pleasures, huh? "
― François Lelord , Hector and the Search for Happiness
9 " Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. This was a definition of feminism I offered in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center more than 10 years ago. It was my hope at the time that it would become a common definition everyone would use. I liked this definition because it did not imply that men were the enemy. By naming sexism as the problem it went directly to the heart of the matter. Practically, it is a definition which implies that all sexist thinking and action is the problem, whether those who perpetuate it are female or male, child or adult. It is also broad enough to include an understanding of systemic institutionalized sexism. As a definition it is open-ended. To understand feminism it implies one has to necessarily understand sexism. "
― , Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics
10 " By naming sexism as the problem it went directly to the heart of the matter. Practically, it is a definition which implies that all sexist thinking and action is the problem, whether those who perpetuate it are female or male, child or adult. "
11 " When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another's spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive. Love and abusive cannot coexist. Abuse and neglect are, by definition, the opposites of nurturance and care.... An overwhelming majority of us come from dysfunctional families in which we were taught that we were not okay, where we were shamed, verbally and/or physically abused, and emotionally neglected even as we were also taught to believe that we were loved. For most folks it is just too threatening to embrace a definition of love that would no longer enable us to see love as present in our families. Too many of us need to cling to a notion of love that either makes abuse acceptable or at least makes it seem that whatever happened was not that bad. "
― , All About Love: New Visions
12 " Everyone wants a definition of creativity that makes what they do into something special and what everyone else does into nothing special. But the fact is, we're all creative. We come up with weird and interesting ideas all the time. The biggest difference between 'creators' isn't their imagination - it's how hard they work. Ideas are easy. Doing stuff is hard. "
― Cory Doctorow , Pirate Cinema
13 " Once you make the requisite personal commitment to make your success deliberate, that commitment must translate into a definition of higher personal standards meant to depict the true impression of what you have become or are becoming within. "
― Archibald Marwizi , Making Success Deliberate
14 " My dad had once told me a definition of faith and I had not forgotten it: 'Faith is to believe something you do not see. The result of that faith is to see what you believed'. "
― Braam Malherbe , The Great Run: Conquering the Sleeping Dragon Within: Life's Lessons on the Run
15 " WHO IS LEARNED? A definition One who, consuming midnight oilin studies diligent and slow,teaches himself, with painful toil,the things that other people know. "
16 " Is there a definition of a truly good person? .... Many say that " Nice guys finish last" , that " kindness is weakness" , and so on. To those of you who are told " Your too nice" or you tell yourself that. That is something to hold on to! So many people say " screw it" I can't be walked on or treated this way. So they become what they think is " tough" ," smarter" or it's just easier. It's really not. Because even though you think you get " respect" you had to sacrifice the good part of who you are for it. "
17 " It would be an instructive exercise for the skeptical reader to try to frame a definition of taxation which does not also include theft. Like the robber, the State demands money at the equivalent of gunpoint; if the taxpayer refuses to pay, his assets are seized by force, and if he should resist such depredation, he will be arrested or shot if he should continue to resist. "
― Murray N. Rothbard
18 " Like navigation markings in unknown waters, definitions of poverty need to be distinctive and unambiguous. A definition that is not precise is as bad as no definition at all. "
― Muhammad Yunus , Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty
19 " For so long considered a second-rate category to other writing genres, Science Fiction should be allotted its true place in literature. The reason Science Fiction is so important is because SF authors create the future. They bring through ideas, technology, and new thought, put it all down in written and spoken word, and then send it out into mass consciousness. When enough people (a critical mass) think about and truly consider the plausibility of a concept, it becomes reality. Think William Gibson, who in 1982's " Burning Chrome" coined " cyberspace" . Few grasped the concept at the time, but as the internet took hold in the 1990's, we not only had a word to describe our experience, we had a definition and an understanding, as well. Coincidence? "
20 " From now on, how one arrives at a definition of the relationship of man's basic nature to his culturally conditioned control systems (extensions) is of crucial importance. For in our shrinking globe man can ill afford cultural illiteracy. "
― Edward T. Hall , Beyond Culture