Definition Quotes

Refer me to one atheist who denies the existence of God.... Etymologically, as well as philosophically, an atheist is one without God. That is all the 'A' before 'Theist' really means.

George William Foote

The literature on ritualistic abuse suggests that ritualistic sexual practices with young children are a characteristic of particularly abusive groups, and that such practices typically occur alongside a diverse range of other abusive practices, such as child prostitution and the manufacture of child abuse images. One of the shortcomings of the available literature, however, is the general presumption (implicit or explicit) that abusive groups are motivated by a religious or spiritual conviction. In clinical and research literature, abusive groups are generally referred to as 'cults', and 'cult abuse' is a term that has been used interchangeably with 'ritual abuse'." p38

Michael Salter

If there's anything i can feel, that's to the fact that i will grow even when i fall. Life is too simple to be taken too serious for me. ‪#‎MyDefinition‬

Temi 'T Quest' Sholeye

I have loved every single person I met in my life, just the definition and situation varied.

Pushpa Rana

I'm agnostic. By definition, I'm unsure of what to believe in, but I'm also borderline-capable of believing in anything and everything, or nothing at all... and I want to believe in something.

Lauren Lola

Quit analyzing me. My crazy needs no definition.

K.F. Breene

A friend or an enemy can tell me something about my subjective being, a casual lover can judge my body — the man I love judges my entire being. Every one of his caresses tells me how I am: attractive, desirable. Every one of his questions and answers tells me what I am: a person with whom he wants to enjoy himself, who interests him more than all the others he knows. By choosing me among all others, my love has made me unique; I alone in all the world am the one he loves, and no other. If I am lucky in love, the definitions become more precise from day to day; after each date I know even better than before what I want to know about myself. The others can say what they like about me; I don't have to believe a word of it. Only the one I love can tell me about myself. Since his definitions grow increasingly precise, my dependence on him also grows more acute as time goes on, but he is in the same position with regard to me. I tell him that I belong to him alone, that he can do with me what he likes, that I cannot live without him.

Esther Vilar

The truth is the very definition of excellence.

Loron-Jon Stokes

Logic, it is often said, is the study of valid arguments. It is a systematic attempt to distinguish valid arguments from invalid arguments.

W.H. Newton-Smith

Nothing, she now knew, could be defined in exclusion, and every bug, pencil, and grass blade was a dictionary in itself, requiring the definitions of all things to fulfill its own.

Anthony Marra

Definition of a Writer: One who tells stories that demand to be told.

Ana Patrick

It seems to me that those who claim to be 'true' and 'bible believing' Christians and yet spend all their time and energy spreading unhappiness and hatred for others - and are themselves consumed by it - are by the very definition of the term - false prophets.

Christina Engela

Definition of money is the reward you get for solving people`s problems.

Sunday Adelaja

The reader who thinks that rationality does not require a definition should ponder the following: I'll give you a million dollars to do something irrational.

Lakshman Krishnamurthi

All definitions are a part of the intellectual dissection and compartmentalization of control.

Bryant McGill

Iskari let others define her because she thought she didn't have a choice. Because she thought she was alone and unloved.

Kristen Ciccarelli

Database Management System [Origin: Data + Latin basus "low, mean, vile, menial, degrading, ounterfeit."] A complex set of interrelational data structures allowing data to be lost in many convenient sequences while retaining a complete record of the logical relations between the missing items. -- From The Devil's DP Dictionary

Stan Kelly Bootle

This is an organic religion. A religion of the people from heart to heart; a faith that finds the presence of the Divine within life, and nature, and ourselves. We don't have teachers and books because we are our own teachers, and our book is the sacred book of the Earth. We believe that we can connect with the God and Goddess and hear their voices, receive their inspiration directly and take responsibility for our own actions, without the intermediary of a pope or rabbi. We have a loose set of beliefs and morals and a ritual structure that is common to all Wiccans, but there is room for creativity and deep mystical experiences. This is a faith with roots as old as the earth. --Meri Fowler

Arin Murphy-Hiscock

The obvious definition of a monarchy seems to be that of a state, in which a single person, by whatsoever name he may be distinguished, is entrusted with the execution of the laws, the management of the revenue, and the command of the army. But, unless public liberty is protected by intrepid and vigilant guardians, the authority of so formidable a magistrate will soon degenerate into despotism. The influence of the clergy, in an age of superstition, might be usefully employed to assert the rights of mankind; but so intimate is the connection between the throne and the altar, that the banner of the church has very seldom been seen on the side of the people. A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies, form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against enterprises of an aspiring prince.

Edward Gibbon

I think of death only with tranquility, as an end. I refuse to let death hamper life. Death must enter life only to define it.

Jean-Paul Sartre

In my lifetime I have witnessed far too many miracles to believe in impossibilities, and so I am officially modifying the defini

Richelle E. Goodrich

A novel is just a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief.

George Saunders

Good communication is less about saying what you mean, and more about defining what you say.

Kelli Jae Baeli

Love is always by definition a choice

Sunday Adelaja

The Oracle pursued a logical course of confuting theism, and leaving 'a-theism' the negative result. It did not, in the absurd terms of common religious propaganda, 'deny the existence of God.' It affirmed that God was a term for an existence imagined by man in terms of his own personality and irreducible to any tenable definition. It did not even affirm that 'there are no Gods'; it insisted that the onus of proof as to any God lay with the theist, who could give none compatible with his definitions.

J.M. Robertson

If you look up 'atheism' in the dictionary, you will probably find it defined as the belief that there is no God. Certainly many people understand atheism in this way. Yet many atheists do not, and this is not what the term means if one considers it from the point of view of its Greek roots. In Greek 'a' means 'without' or 'not' and 'theos' means 'god.' From this standpoint an atheist would simply be someone without a belief in God, not necessarily someone who believes that God does not exist. According to its Greek roots, then, atheism is a negative view, characterized by the absence of belief in God.

Michael Martin

Atheism ... goes back to the Ancient Greek (a — a negative prefix, theos — god), evidencing the antiquity of the outlook of those who saw no presence of God (or gods) in their everyday lives, or who even denied the very existence of God (or gods). There are different types of atheism, but atheism in one form or another has existed in every civilization.[T]he concept "atheist" partially coincides with such notions as "skeptic," "agnostic," and "rationalist" and it borders with such notions as "anticlerical," "God fighter" (theomachist), and "God abuser" (blasphemer).It is wrong to identify an atheist as one who denies God, though this is what opponents of atheism usually claim. If such people exist, it would probably be more correct to call them the "verbal" murderers of God, for the prefix a- means denying as elimination. ... I would like to stress that the prefix a- does not necessarily mean rejection. It can mean "absence of." For example, "apathy" means "absence of passion." Thus, the concept "atheist" does not necessarily mean nihilism.

Valerii A. Kuvakin

Where would the end be? Will the idea—the definition—of perfection stay the same? No. Perfection is too fickle. It’s in our nature to never be satisfied. We always think we can do more.

J.D. Brewer

There’s a fascinating frailty of the human mind that psychologists know all about, called “argument from ignorance.” This is how it goes. Remember what the “U” stands for in “UFO”? You see lights flashing in the sky. You’ve never seen anything like this before and don’t understand what it is. You say, “It’s a UFO!” The “U” stands for “unidentified.”But then you say, “I don’t know what it is; it must be aliens from outer space, visiting from another planet.” The issue here is that if you don’t know what something is, your interpretation of it should stop immediately. You don’t then say it must be X or Y or Z. That’s argument from ignorance. It’s common. I’m not blaming anybody; it may relate to our burning need to manufacture answers because we feel uncomfortable about being steeped in ignorance.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are not as they ought to be.

Ambrose Bierce

Your ability to show discretion defines your likeliness to contribute to a wholesome performance.

Even Engesland

The nature of atheism merits clarification on two further points which involve less common ideas about theism. The first involves the idea of 'God' which is metaphorical — for example, a theist who believes in 'God' as a principle of conscience or morality. This 'God' exists in a person’s mind and it is not something which atheists will dispute. Atheists agree that gods exist as ideas in people’s minds; the disagreement lies over whether any gods actually exist independently of human beliefs. Those are the gods which atheists disbelieve in or deny.The second type of theism involves gods that exist as physical objects: stones, trees, rivers, or even the universe itself. Believers treat these objects are their gods, but do atheists reject their existence? Of course not — but how do they then remain atheists? The point of disagreement here is whether the label 'god' communicates any information beyond the more common label of 'stone,' 'tree,' or 'universe.' If not, then as far as atheists are concerned, those objects don’t merit the extra label 'god' and they remain atheists.

Austin Cline

Atheistic existentialism, of which I am a representative, declares with greater consistency that if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence, a being which exists before it can be defined by any conception of it. That being is man....

Jean-Paul Sartre

The most satisfactory definition of man from the scientific point of view is probably Man the Tool-maker.

Kenneth Oakley

People from different cultures have different definitions for beauty. Isn't that sad to judge others with our standards... rather than appreciate them?

Mizuki Nomura

Identity was a liquid state, ever interchangeable, and adaptable to its surroundings... It was better to not have favourites - a snake didn't mourn when it had to shed its skin.

Leonardo Donofrio

The coining of their new catch-phrase 'homophiliac' displayed in contrast to 'homophobic' was rather amusing, though to think that they believe it means anything different to 'homophobic' is just facetious. It's like someone trying to create a difference in definition between 'genocide' and 'ethnic cleansing' - or to make the one look better or less reprehensible than the other.

Christina Engela

A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.

Samuel Butler

An action made by a unwitting man, shall not define, nor justify a common though and interpretation.

Even Engesland

You have a faculty for defining the simplest in terms of the grandiose, so that a poor devil like me can't understand it.

Malcolm Bradbury

examination of its own history and of the forms of thought given the name “philosophy” indicates that “philosophy” has itself borne many fundamentally different meanings through the years, and from one school or movement to another.

Gregory B. Sadler

The definition of 'Employment' by an employer, and, that by an employee, are seldom the same.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I like the word 'fuck'. The word means what it means, but it also means whatever you need it to mean.

Lisa Glatt

We are but cells living in a much larger organism, however, this does not make our existence less significant – for an organism without cells is no organism at all. We define it; we make it what it is. We are responsible for its health, its functionality, and above all, its purpose. A lone cell can restore the others, or a lone cell can spread a plague.

A.J. Darkholme

Definition is a choice.

Andy Harglesis

Don’t be defined by someone else’s definition of you.

Toni Sorenson

Some do magic, some are god. Most seems a lie, yet most is true. It all depends on the definitions of words within ones illusion of the world.

L.H.

Strategy is about shaping the future.

Max McKeown

Friends, are you a man according to Gods definition? Have you ever placed yourself under God’s microscopic eyes? Have you examined yourself according to his standards of judgment? Does he call you a man

Sunday Adelaja

Friends??The people which are hypocrites and the people which you rought and hard you deal with them,

Deyth Banger

Most people are afflicted with an inability to say what they see or think. They say there’s nothing more difficult than to define a spiral in words; they claim it is necessary to use the unliterary hand, twirling it in a steadily upward direction, so that human eyes will perceive the abstract figure immanent in wire spring and a certain type of staircase. But if we remember that to say is to renew, we will have no trouble defining a spiral; it’s a circle that rises without ever closing. I realize that most people would never dare to define it this way, for they suppose that defining is to say what others want us to say rather than what’s required for the definition. I’ll say it more accurately: a spiral is a potential circle that winds round as it rises, without ever completing itself. But no, the definition is still abstract. I’ll resort to the concrete, and all will become clear: a spiral is a snake without a snake, vertically wound around nothing. All literature is an attempt to make life real. All of us know, even when we act on what we don’t know, life is absolutely unreal in its directly real form; the country, the city and our ideas are absolutely fictitious things, the offspring of our complex sensation of our own selves. Impressions are incommunicable unless we make them literary. Children are particularly literary, for they say what they feel not what someone has taught them to feel. Once I heard a child, who wished to say that he was on the verge of tears, say not ‘I feel like crying’, which is what an adult, i.e., an idiot, would say but rather, ’ I feel like tears.’ And this phrase -so literary it would seem affected in a well-known poet, if he could ever invent it - decisively refers to the warm presence of tears about to burst from eyelids that feel the liquid bitterness. ‘I feel like tears’! The small child aptly defined his spiral. To say! To know how to say! To know how to exist via the written voice and the intellectual image! This is all that matters in life; the rest is men and women, imagined loves and factitious vanities, the wiles of our digestion and forgetfulness, people squirming- like worms when a rock is lifted - under the huge abstract boulder of the meaningless blue sky.

Fernando Pessoa

Atheism is without God. It does not assert no God. The atheist does not say that there is no God, but he says 'I know not what you mean by God. I am without the idea of God. The word God to me is a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation. I do not deny God, because I cannot deny that of which I have no conception, and the conception of which by its affirmer is so imperfect that he is unable to define it for me.

Charles Bradlaugh

...properly a theory about knowledge, not about religion. A theist and a Christian may be an agnostic; an atheist may not be an agnostic. An atheist may deny that there is God, and in this case his atheism is dogmatic and not agnostic. Or he may refuse to acknowledge that there is a God simply on the ground that he perceives no evidence for his existence and finds the arguments which have been advanced in proof of it invalid. In this case his atheism is critical, not agnostic. The atheist may be, and not infrequently is, an agnostic.

Robert Flint

Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said, 'Try all things, hold fast by that which is good'; it is the foundation of the Reformation, which simply illustrated the axiom that every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him, it is the great principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental axiom of modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic position, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.The results of the working out of the agnostic principle will vary according to individual knowledge and capacity, and according to the general condition of science. That which is unproved today may be proved, by the help of new discoveries, tomorrow. The only negative fixed points will be those negations which flow from the demonstrable limitation of our faculties. And the only obligation accepted is to have the mind always open to conviction.That it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can provide evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what agnosticism asserts and in my opinion, is all that is essential to agnosticism.

Thomas Henry Huxley

When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until at last I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure that they had attained a certain 'gnosis'--had more or less successfully solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion ...So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'. It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the 'gnostic' of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our Society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes.

Thomas Henry Huxley

Logically, this kind of atheism did not prove that there was no God.... On the contrary, Southwell was typical in placing the onus probandi on those who affirmed the existence of God and Holyoake regarded himself as an atheist only in his inability to believe what the churches would have him believe. They were content to show that the Christian concept of the supernatural was meaningless, that the arguments in its favor were illogical, and that the mysteries of the universe, insofar as they were explicable, could be accounted for in material terms.

Edward Royle

A major gap between many of the denominations stems from how people define some of the most basic terms, such as 'religion' itself.

Criss Jami

Power is defined as an ability to do qualitative work with a quantitative passion, backed by a compelling conviction, directed by a propelling purpose, fulfilling a divine destiny. That is power!

Israelmore Ayivor

We know the meaning so long as no one asks us to define it.

William James

Life is stress by definition.

Rebecca McNutt

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