Defining Quotes

If I had only one hour to save the world, I would spend fifty-five minutes defining the problem, and only five minutes finding the solution.

The stronger person is not the one making the most noise but the one who can quietly direct the conversation toward defining and solving problems.

Never let anyone define what you are capable of by using parameters that don’t apply to you.

I don'’t think there was one. I can'’t name one. Not because I had a lot of great feuds, but it would be hard to say the defining feud.

The great virtue of bureaucracy - indeed, perhaps its defining characteristic ~ was that it was an institutional method for applying general rules to specific cases, thereby making the actions of government fair and predictable.

The defining factor [for success] is never resources; it’s resourcefulness.

I think every individual has his or her own power, and it's a matter of working, taking time and defining what that power is.

My experience is that I find myself having to constantly define myself to others, day-in, day-out. The quote that's helped me the most through that is from Toni Morrison's "Beloved" where she says, "Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined" - so I find myself defining myself for other people lest I be defined by others and stuck into some box where I don't particularly belong.

When I have one week to solve a seemingly impossible problem, I spend six days defining the problem. Then, the solution becomes obvious.

The first step is clearly defining what it is you're after, because without knowing that, you'll never get it.

I don't like defining myself. I just am.

Childlike surrender and trust, I believe, is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship.

Every day when a man or woman gets dressed, they are in effect defining who they are. That daily clean slate is a time in our lives when we can determine who we want to be.

Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it.

It's a weird feeling when people are defining you, and you haven't even defined yourself.

One is attracted to beauty. Beauty is the coordination of things, in such a way, that it is what attracts you. It's almost self-defining.

Goodness can endure a few moments; holiness is life-defining.

Other people and their opinions hold no power in defining our destiny.

What exactly is mathematics? Many have tried but nobody has really succeeded in defining mathematics; it is always something else.

Where defining foreign policy as 'ethical' went wrong was that it implied that all decisions would be exclusive in every respect of any dealings with unethical regimes.

Just as eunuchs will never know aesthetics as applied to the selection of beautiful women, so neither will pure rationalists ever know ethics, nor will they ever succeed in defining happiness, for happiness is a thing that is lived and felt, not a thing that is reasoned or defined.

Photography is my method for defining the confusing world that rushes constantly toward me. It is my defensive attempt to reduce our daily chaos to a set of understandable images.

Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.

An institution which is financed by a budget - or which enjoys a monopoly which the customer cannot escape - is rewarded for what it deserves rather than what it earns. It is paid for 'good intentions' and 'programs'. It is paid for not alienating important constituents rather than satisfying any one group. It is misdirected by the way it is being paid into defining performance and results as what will produce the budget rather than as what will produce contribution.

I am defining leadership in terms of the role, not the position.

Give up defining yourself - to yourself or to others. You won't die. You will come to life.

Poetry is the power of defining the indefinable in terms of the unforgettable.

Defining yourself by your taste is easier than defining yourself by any genuine stance on something.

I never say I'm an "ist" of any kind unless I know how the other person is defining it.

Keep on being a star in your own right. Keep on defining yourself. Don't be defined by others.

I'm in my 30's, and I'm still struggling with defining myself. I'm working every day to take control of things that are out of my control, and not letting them bring me down or frustrate me, to the point of paralysis.

Can the existence of a mathematical entity be proved without defining it ?

We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.

I dont think gender is aesthetically defining for me.

Futility is the defining characteristic of life.

Now, to take that which has caused us to create the world, and include it within the world we have created, is clearly impossible. This is why Quality cannot be defined. If we do define it, we are defining something less than Quality itself.

English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing.

All I want is the defining moment.

The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.

In Re-framing, you interpret the event in a positive way. You change your language . Instead if defining it as a problem you re-frame it as a situation . A problem is something that is upsetting and stressful. A situation is something that you simply deal with .

The question of the right to privacy must be one of the defining issues of our time.

American poetry is always about defining oneself individually,claiming one's right to be different and often to break taboos.

You are only one defining decision away from a totally different life!

Defining the terms of the debate generally dictates who's gonna' win it.

One defining symptom of decadence is a fondness for vast and nonsensical extravagance.

[the virtues] cannot exist without Prudence. A proof of this is that everyone, even at the present day, in defining Virtue, after saying what disposition it is [i.e. moral virtue] and specifying the things with which it is concerned, adds that it is a disposition determined by the right principle; and the right principle is the principle determined by Prudence.

If everyone is defining a problem or solving it one way and the results are subpar, this is the time to ask, What if I did the opposite? Don't follow a model that doesn't work. If the recipe sucks, it doesn't matter how good a cook you are.

Being a twin, and being my sister's twin, is such a defining part of my life that I wouldn't know how to be who I am, including a writer, without that being somehow at the centre.

No disability or dictionary out there, is capable of clearly defining who we are as a person.

The world is not yet finished, but everyone is behaving as if everything was known. This is not true. In fact, the computer world as we know it is based upon one tradition that has been waddling along for the last fifty years, growing in size and ungainliness, and is essentially defining the way we do everything. My view is that today’s computer world is based on techie misunderstandings of human thought and human life. And the imposition of inappropriate structures throughout the computer is the imposition of inappropriate structures on the things we want to do in the human world.