Undefined Quotes

• A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

  Norman Mailer

  Freedom, Democracies Have, Tyrants

  1963 The Presidential Papers, preface.

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• The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity- unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity.

  Henry Clay

  America, Democracy, United States

  Henry Clay (1863). “Life and times”, p.344

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• Man's role is uncertain, undefined, and perhaps unnecessary.

  Margaret Mead

  Men, Roles, Unnecessary

  Margaret Mead (1975). “Male and female: a study of the sexes in a changing world”, William Morrow & Co

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• The President can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power in the Federal Constitution or in an act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof. There is no undefined residuum of power which he can exercise because it seems to him to be in the public interest.

  William Howard Taft

  Exercise, Power, President

  William Howard Taft, David Henry Burton (2009). “William Howard Taft: Essential Writings and Addresses”, p.200, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

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• And yet what is Modernism? It is undefined.

  John Crowe Ransom

  Modernism

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• I want out of the labels. I don't want my whole life crammed into a single word. A story. I want to find something else, unknowable, some place to be that's not on the map. A real adventure.' A spinx. A mystery. A blank. Unknown. Undefined.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Single, Real, Adventure

  Chuck Palahniuk (2011). “Invisible Monsters: A Novel”, p.261, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Your only identity is I AM undefined and infinite. Any label you give yourself limits yourself.

  Deepak Chopra

  Giving, Identity, Labels

  FaceBook post by Deepak Chopra from Sep 08, 2011

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• What separates sports from entrepreneurism, however, is that in business we constantly have to overcome undefined and unpredictable challenges. Athletes train for specific events and conditions, whereas entrepreneurs generally have little idea what they will encounter along the way.

  Naveen Jain

  Sports, Athlete, Ideas

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• When we measure something we are forcing an undetermined, undefined world to assume an experimental value. We are not measuring the world, we are creating it.

  Niels Bohr

  Creating, World, Assuming

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• As soon as the circumstances of an experiment are well known, we stop gathering statistics. ... The effect will occur always without exception, because the cause of the phenomena is accurately defined. Only when a phenomenon includes conditions as yet undefined,Only when a phenomenon includes conditions as yet undefined, can we compile statistics. ... we must learn therefore that we compile statistics only when we cannot possibly help it; for in my opinion, statistics can never yield scientific truth.

  Claude Bernard

  Learning, Knowledge, Science

  Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.159, Courier Corporation

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• The sea has this contradictory quality, that the more you see of it, the more it overwhelms the eye and disappears in its own brightness. Like a flame, whose meaning is light but whose centre is dark, it demands to be undefined.

  Alice Oswald

  Eye, Dark, Light

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• In very truth, a wise imagination, which is the presence of the spirit of God, is the best guide that man or woman can have; for it is not the things we see the most clearly that influence us the most powerfully; undefined, yet vivid visions of something beyond, something which eye has not seen nor ear heard, have far more influence than any logical sequences whereby the same things may be demonstrated to the intellect. It is the nature of the thing, not the clearness of its outline, that determines its operation. We live by faith, and not by sight.

  George MacDonald

  Wise, Eye, Men

  George MacDonald (1883). “The Imagination, and Other Essays”

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• An undefined goal is unreachable.

  Brian Tracy

  Goal, Unreachable

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• Undefined Christianity is not a problem in our generation. It is defined Christianity that brings the rub.

  Alistair Begg

  Our Generation, Generations, Problem

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• You can't make either life or art, you have to work in the hole in between, which is undefined. That's what makes the adventure of painting.

  Robert Rauschenberg

  Art, Adventure, Painting

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• The words graphic designer, architect, or industrial designer stick in my throat, giving me a sense of limitation, of specialisation within the specialty, of a relationship to society and form itself that is unsatisfactory and incomplete. This inadequate set of terms to describe an active life reveals only partially the still undefined nature of the designer.

  Alvin Lustig

  Life, Relationship, Nature

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• While theoretically a person may block God out, logically there will be a breakdown because ultimately all enunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind. And if that moral doctrine is not absolute then the definer himself becomes undefined. That's what we are living with - an undefined definer giving us definitions for our course, and we are being trapped in the quicksand of the absence of objective truth.

  Ravi Zacharias

  Block, Giving, May

  Source: rzim.org

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• I want to find something else, unknowable, some place that's not on the map. A real adventure.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Real, Adventure, Maps

  Chuck Palahniuk (2011). “Invisible Monsters: A Novel”, p.261, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Lacking an external focus, the mind turns inward on itself and creates problems to solve, even if the problems are undefined or unimportant. If you find a focus, an ambitious goal that seems impossible and forces you to grow, these doubts disappear.

  Tim Ferriss

  Goal, Focus, Doubt

  "The 4-Hour Workweek". Book by Tim Ferriss, 2007.

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• ... the results are undefined, and we all know what 'undefined' means: it means it works during development, it works during testing, and it blows up in your most important customers' faces.

  Scott Meyers

  Mean, Blow, Important

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• The contemporary hero, the mythical pattern in the imitation of whom we would live, remains as yet undefined. We have no hero; what is more to the point, we suspect hero worship.

  Irwin Edman

  Hero, Patterns, Worship

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• Uncharged with invisible meaning, the visible is nothing, mere clay; and without visible circumstance, a territory, to connect to, our spirit is shapeless, nameless, and undefined.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Clay, Purpose, Territory

  E. L. Doctorow (1994). “Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution: Selected Essays, 1977-1992”, Perennial

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• With the coming of television, and the knowledge of how it could be used to seduce voters, the old political values disappeared. Something new, murky, undefined started to rise from the mists.

  Joe McGinniss

  Political, Television, Voters

  Joe McGinniss (1969). “The Selling of the President 1968”

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• That undefined and mingled hum, Voice of the desert never dumb!

  James Hogg

  Voice, Dumb, Desert

  James Hogg (1855). “The Poetical Works of the Ettrick Shepherd: With an Autobiography; and Illustrative Engravings, Chiefly from Original Drawings”, p.294

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• Even the most abject have a sense of superiority based on powerful though undefined merits.

  Mason Cooley

  Powerful, Merit, Superiority

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