Merely Define Quotes & Sayings

You have to be able to answer those questions plainly and clearly. There can be qualifications and "get-outs," but the answers must remain comprehensible, because they define you. They add up to a political, not merely personal, character. This requires thought, detailed analysis and intellectual rigour. Politics is a far more intellectual business than is often realized. You may think: Well, if it's simplicity that's required, you don't need a whole lot of detail. Wrong. The simplicity is not born of superficial analysis. It is simple precisely because it is the product of being worked through. — Tony Blair

The greatest hits in some weird way marks the end of something. — Sheryl Crow

In your sales pitch use plain language, and as simply as you can, explain exactly how your service works. — Timi Nadela

Good writers define reality
Bad ones merely restate it. — Edward Albee

The truth is that no one can keep you captive. No one can keep you unhappy. No one can keep you abused. Our lives rise to the level we accept. I do believe we can rise from the screaming blood of our losses, of extreme pain, physically debilitating emotion, psychological neglect, and apathy, and not merely survive, but thrive. We do not need to let our histories or our losses define us except in the way we choose. We can use them as fuel to create real depth, beauty, connectedness, and compassion in our lives. Our stories can make us exceptional people, not damaged ones. If we choose to be truthful with ourselves. And if we choose to digest and release the pain rather than try to avoid it. This is how pain accumulates and creates more pain, leading to neurosis, pathology, and brittleness of spirit. — Jewel

To define knowledge as merely empirical is to limit one's ability to know; it enfeebles one's ability to feel and think. — Wendell Berry

English clubs are very exclusive. I played Royal Foxshire and they made me wear a suit and tie ... in the shower. — Bob Hope

Love is it's own protection. — Emma Goldman

We also need to find a language capable of defending government as an element of the common good, one that does not define itself as both a punishing and corporate state. This is not merely a matter of redefining sovereignty, but also rethinking what is distinctive about the social state, social responsibility, and the common good. — Henry Giroux

I've got no sympathy for him whatsoever. I just wish we had got 10 past him. At the end of the day we've got to be ruthless and we are in the business of winning for us. If they had scored three or four, nobody would have said do you feel sorry for Mark Bosnich? We don't feel sorry for Craig Forrest. — Gary Neville

Just as it is necessary to rob your enemies of their humanity, so you have to find a way of relinquishing responsibility for the evil you are about to commit. You must define yourself as a victim. It follows that you, in committing murder, even genocide, are merely acting in self-defence. It is the victim who is responsible. This was Hitler's constant and deeply paradoxical claim. As Jeffrey Herf points out, he and his propagandists had to maintain two completely contradictory ideas: 'one rooted in the grandiose idea of a master race and world domination, the other in the self-pitying paranoia of the innocent, beleaguered victim'.23 In general, as Vamik Volkan notes, dualists tend to combine 'paradoxical feelings of omnipotence and victimization'.24 On the one hand we are masters of the universe; on the other we are the devil's slaves. — Jonathan Sacks

I'm less interested in slasher, and go more for roles that can affect you on a personal level. I'm interested in human empathy in the movies I see, and in the ones I am a part of. — Joshua Leonard

If you define evolution as merely meaning change over time, then I don't see any problem with a person being a Christian and believing in evolution. But that's not how textbooks define evolution. They define evolution as being random and undirected without plan or purpose. — Lee Strobel

People live their lives bound by what they accept as correct and true. That's how they define Reality. But what does it mean to be "correct" or "true"? Merely vague concepts ... Their Reality may all be a mirage. Can we consider them to simply be living in their own world, shaped by their beliefs? — Masashi Kishimoto

specialized knowledge" - that is, something that sets a person apart from all others and helps to define his worth and can be the basis for his wealth. The key to specialized knowledge, however, is not merely having it, but sharing it. — Greg S. Reid

The best advice I was given if that if you want to succeed and you want to achieve, you have to learn how to handle failures. — Mike Scioscia

Every time someone ends a prayer in the Western world they say Amen - that is the name of an Egyptian god associated with completion. So we're still praying to their gods. — Whitley Strieber

We are just waves in time and space, changing continuously, and the illusion of individuality is produced through the concatenation of the rapidly succeeding phases of existence. What we define as likeness is merely the result of the symmetrical arrangement of molecules which compose our body. — Nikola Tesla

Technological innovations do not define a science; they merely prove that medicine is scientific - i.e., — Siddhartha Mukherjee

I see women going anywhere they want to. And I do mean want to. Because a lot of people measure success merely by position, title and salary. I think women feel comfortable enough in their own skin to put that secondary to what they want. They don't have to define success by the measure of society. — Charlene Li

Impatience [ ... ] is a twentieth-century virtue. At twenty, when they saw, or thought they saw, what life could be, the sum of bliss it held, the endless conquests it allowed, they realised they would not have the strength to wait. Like anyone else, they could have made it; but all they wanted was to have it made. That is probably the sense in which they were what are commonly called intellectuals. — Georges Perec

If to "aestheticize" is to glide across brutality and cruelty, treat them merely as dramatic occasions for the artist rather than structures of power to be revealed and dismantled - much hangs on the words "merely" and "rather than." Opportunism isn't the same as committed attention. But we can also define the "aesthetic" not as a privileged and sequestered rendering of human suffering, but as news of an awareness, a resistance, that totalizing systems want to quell: art reaching into us for what's still passionate, still unintimidated, still unquenched. — Adrienne Rich

When [a man] thinks that he is reasoning he is really disputing, just because he cannot define and divide, and so know that of which he is speaking; and he will pursue a merely verbal opposition in the spirit of contention and not of fair discussion. — Plato

Consider this book, then, a feminist anatomy of the trainwreck. It's an effort to figure out who she is: why she's making us so angry; what, in general, she hath done to offend us. These are questions of more immediate and personal relevance than you may think: When women look hard enough at the trainwreck, we almost invariably end up looking at ourselves. — Sady Doyle

She felt that "truthful" and "honest" were two very different concepts. She could truthfully say that she hadn't eaten Roselyn's Chinese leftovers, but that wasn't honest because it omitted that Eliot did and that Shane did not object. — Thomm Quackenbush

We can in fact only define a weed, mutatis mutandis, in terms of the well-known definition of dirt - as matter out of place. What we call a weed is in fact merely a plant growing where we do not want it. — Edward James Salisbury

The ladies egged him on; in Eve's name, they dared him; so he made love with discreet verbs and light nouns, delicate conjunctions. They begged; they defied him to define ... define everything. They could not be scandalized - impossible, they said. Indecent prepositions such as in, on, up, merely made them smile, and the roundest exclamation broke upon them like a bubble's kiss, a butterfly's. Smooth and creamy adjectives enabled them to lick their lips upon the crudest story. How charmingly you speak, Reverend Furber, how much you've seen of this wicked world, and how alive you are to it, they said. — William H Gass

No wonder the word 'feminism' was feared. It had been much too narrowly defined. I define a feminist as a self-empowering woman who wishes the same for her sisters. I do not think the term implies a certain sexual orientation, a certain style of dress or membership in a certain political party. A feminist is merely a woman who refuses to accept the notion that women's power must come through men. — Erica Jong

Definitions require lines of distinction. If I'm going to define the word up, for instance, then I must come up with a definition that rudely excludes down. If I want to define cow, I must have a definition that discriminates against horses and aardvarks. The "old" version of marriage drew a clear, obvious, logical, purposeful, meaningful, and objective line. What about the new? Is marriage merely a romantic agreement between two individuals who love each other? If so, that opens up a whole slew of alternate manifestations of marriage, which either leaves the definition so "open" as to fade it into oblivion, or else it requires the pioneers of this edited thing to begin making a thousand stipulations until, before long, they're doing exactly what they accused us of doing, only they're now doing it for increasingly arbitrary and superficial reasons. — Matt Walsh

Democracy has become, unless I mistake, a kind of test or shibboleth, by which we try men and measures; and this is the same as to say that it is merely a word which is powerful with us, and not the wide and true notion of what the word means. But we must define the true import of words, and not be slaves to syllables; for democracy in form is not necessarily people-power in fact, but power perhaps of a few, who cajole the many and so lead and use the people for their own ends. — James Vila Blake

Ensuring that the US continues to lead the world in science and technology will be a central priority for my administration. — Barack Obama

Many people hold onto a grudge because it offers the illusion of power and a perverse feeling of security. But in fact, we are held hostage by our anger. It is never too late to forgive. But you can forgive too soon. I am especially wary of what I call "saintly forgiveness." Premature forgiveness is common among people who avoid conflict. They're afraid of their own anger and the anger of others. But their forgiveness is false. Their anger goes underground. I define forgiving as letting someone back into your heart. This returns us to a loving state -- and not merely within the relationship -- we feel good about ourselves and the world. True forgiveness isn't easy, but it transforms us significantly. To forgive is to love and to feel worthy of love. In that sense, it is always worthwhile. — Robert Karen

Although some observers believe that feminism and sexual liberalism no longer threaten family values, little in fact has changed. Contemporary sexual liberals are merely less honest than earlier feminists in facing the inevitable antifamily consequences of their beliefs. They continue to maintain that the differences between men and women, such as men's greater drive to produce in the workplace, are somehow artificial and dispensable. They still insist that men and women can generally share and reverse roles without jeopardizing marriage. They still encourage a young woman to sacrifice her twenties in intense rivalry with men, leaving her to clutch desperately for marriage as her youthfulness and fertility pass. Although they declare themselves supporters of the family, they are scarcely willing to define it. — George Gilder

Think ahead. Don't let day-to-day operations drive out planning. — Donald Rumsfeld

Some introverts are perfectly comfortable with public speaking; I'm not one of them. — Susan Cain

Flint surprises me by laughing out loud, covering his mouth for a moment as though trying to hide it. "Oh my God - Relax. I'm still coherent, right?"

"Define coherent and I'll let you be," I mumble at him, annoyed.

Flint smirks. "You're cute when you fuss over me." I have to wonder if this is friend appropriate behavior.

"I am not cute." I say; feeling heat spread over my cheeks and looking away from him. "And I'm merely concerned for your safety." I trail off when I hear the noise of someone moving around above our heads.

Flint chuckles and says, "I think you're cute. — Melissa Simmons

An evil deed, like fresh milk, does not go bad suddenly. Smouldering, like fire covered by ashes, the evil deed follows the fool. — Gautama Buddha