Defining Quotes - Page 13

• As many glaciers are melting and icy tundras are decaying, there's an unprecedented amount of woolly mammoth material that's becoming dislodged from the ice. Not just mammoth, but all kinds of fossils from the past. What occurred to me was, had anyone tried to pinpoint the first case of human-induced extinction? What was the first time we as species pushed another one to oblivion? I would argue that's probably going to be one of the defining moral problems of the century, human-induced extinction. And I really wanted to know, when did we first cross that barrier?

  Dario Robleto

  Past, Ice, Becoming

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• A defining reality for me is what Scripture teaches in Hebrews 12, that God is our father, and that a sign that he loves us is that he disciplines us, he takes us through hardship to build character in us that could not be shaped apart from difficulty.

  Joshua Harris

  Father, Character, Reality

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• The problem of defining exactly what is meant by the signal velocity, which cropped up as long ago as 1907, has not been solved.

  Hans Christian von Baeyer

  Long Ago, Velocity, Problem

  Hans Christian Von Baeyer (2004). “Information: The New Language of Science”, p.135, Harvard University Press

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• There has been one defining production for me in each decade.

  Stephen Daldry

  Productions, Has Beens, Decades

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• When you strip away the genre differences and the technological complexities, all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.

  Jane McGonigal

  Games, Differences, Goal

  Jane McGonigal (2011). “Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World”, p.23, Penguin

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• First-generation children were strongly influenced by their immigrant parents' approach to choice. For them, choice was not just a way of defining and asserting their individuality, but a way to create community and harmony by deferring to the choices of people whom they trusted and respected.

  Sheena Iyengar

  Children, Motivation, Inspiration

  "The art of choosing". TED conference, www.ted.com. July, 2010.

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• I have worked in the homes of many successful people and have seen firsthand that everyone fails in life, but failure can be a gift if you don't give up and are willing to learn, improve, and grow because of it.  You see, failure often serves as a defining moment, a crossroads on the journey of your life.  It gives you a test designed to measure your courage, perseverance, commitment, and a dedication.  Are you a pretender who gives up after a little adversity or a contender who keeps getting up after getting knocked down?

  Jon Gordon

  Perseverance, Giving Up, Adversity

  Jon Gordon (2014). “The Carpenter: A Story About the Greatest Success Strategies of All”, p.76, John Wiley & Sons

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• Using the stratagem of defining character by what changes and what remains the same, the one constant always seems to be regret. We are defined by the objects of our regret.

  Stephen Tobolowsky

  Regret, Character, Constant

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• Obesity is the result of a loss of self-control. Indeed, loss of self-control might be said to be the defining social (or anti-social) characteristic of our age: public drunkenness, excessive gambling, promiscuity and common-or-garden rudeness are all examples of our collective loss of self-control.

  Theodore Dalrymple

  Loss, Garden, Gambling

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• Among all the religious persecutions with which almost every page of modern history is stained, no victim ever suffered but for violation of what Government denominated the law of God. To prevent a similar train of evils in this country, the Constitution has wisely withheld from our Government the power of defining the divine law.

  Richard Mentor Johnson

  Country, Religious, Government

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• Once the threshold is crossed when there is a self-sustaining level of life in space, then life's long-range future will be secure irrespective of any of the risks on Earth. Will this happen before our technological civilization disintegrates, leaving this as a might-have-been? Will the self-sustaining space communities be established before a catastrophe sets back the prospect of any such enterprise, perhaps foreclosing it forever? We live at what could be a defining moment for the cosmos.

  Martin Rees

  Moon, Civilization, Space

  "Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning". Book by Martin Rees, 2003.

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• You see, Dad, Professor McLuhan says that the environment that man creates becomes his medium for defining his role in it. The invention of type created linear, or sequential thought, separating thought from action. Now, with TV and folk singing, thought and action are closer and social involvement is greater. We again live in a village. Get it?

  Marshall McLuhan

  Dad, Men, Media

  Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore, Jerome Agel (1996). “The medium is the massage: an inventory of effects”, Hardwired

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• The two defining issues of this century are both universal but felt locally: the global water crisis and the resources boom.

  Jay Weatherill

  Two, Issues, Water

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• One cannot explain words without making incursions into the sciences themselves, as is evident from dictionaries; and, conversely, one cannot present a science without at the same time defining its terms.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Science, Term, Dictionary

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• I'd say that my profession ends where architectural thinking ends - architectural thinking in terms of thinking about programs and organizational structure. These abstractions play a role in many other disciplines, and those disciplines are now defining their 'architectures' as well.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Thinking, Play, Discipline

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• When it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways.

  Robert Kagan

  Europe, Priorities, Challenges

  Robert Kagan (2007). “Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order”, p.4, Vintage

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• People have defining moments, i suppose, especially when they're children.

  Markus Zusak

  Children, People, Defining Moments

  Markus Zusak (2013). “The Book Thief: Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition”, p.67, RH Childrens Books

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• It surprises people that there's actually a very large number of slaves in the world today-our best estimate is 27 million. And that is defining a slave in a very narrow way; we're not talking about sweatshop workers or people who are just poor, we're talking about people who are controlled by violence, who cannot walk away, who are being held against their will, who are being paid nothing.

  Kevin Bales

  Talking, Numbers, People

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• Consequences flow from a justice's interpretation in a direct and immediate way. A judicial decision respecting the incompatibility of Jim Crow with a constitutional guarantee of equality is not simply a contemplative exercise in defining the shape of a just society. It is an order

  William J. Brennan

  Exercise, Order, Justice

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• So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.

  John F. Kennedy

  Peace, War, Moving

  American University Commencement Address, delivered 10 June 1963

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• I don't have real big aspirations to be a movie star. I would love to be on a long-running hit TV show. You end up playing a defining role.

  Jenna Fischer

  Running, Stars, Real

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• I also had a will that let me eliminate everything that stood in the way of my becoming the best dancer I could be. By a gradual process... (I) had invested every bit of my dreams, my hopes, my energies in defining myself as a dancer.

  Twyla Tharp

  Dance, Dream, Becoming The Best

  Twyla Tharp (1992). “Push Comes to Shove”, Bantam Dell Publishing Group

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• We talk about defining moments, but I think nothing can define you. They're all refining moments. You're constantly refining yourself and refining your life.

  Sheryl Crow

  Life, Thinking, Growth

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• Language is not simply a reporting device for experience but a defining framework for it. So if, from perhaps some unhealthy desire for sympathetic support, you describe your life in negative terms you will find that this will reinforce your mind's negative emotions and make you unhappy and even more susceptible to feeling unhappy in the future. By simply doing the reverse and focusing on why you are lucky and grateful things are not worse, you will strengthen and increase your mind's positive emotions and make yourself happy and even more likely to feel happy in the future.

  Benjamin Lee Whorf

  Gratitude, Grateful, Support You

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• People who know me would say they get a kick out of the fact that I'm always playing nice people, not that I'm not a nice person, but it's not a defining element.

  Elizabeth Reaser

  Nice, People, Facts

  "Elizabeth Reaser on Broadway, Breasts and Playing Opposite the Big Boys — Brave and True". Interview with Nancy Doyle Palmer, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 26, 2012.

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