Define Quotations

The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant.

Do not let yourself get in your own way. Don't judge yourself and knock yourself down. There is enough of that out there already. Remember: you are an artist, and you bring something special to this craft. Take in notes and criticism, but don't let them define you. Don't try to become a watered down version of yourself.

Family traditions counter alienation and confusion. They help us define who we are; they provide something steady, reliable and safe in a confusing world.

I'm a very loyal person and I allowed myself to be defined as somebody who was doing Gordon's bidding. I should have fought back harder to define myself at an earlier stage.

For me, style is essentially doing things well. If you want to be outrageous, be outrageous with style. If you want to be restrained, be restrained with style. One can't specifically define style. It's like the perfume to a flower. It's a quality you can't analyze.

In our quest to define and describe the world, we have crisscrossed the oceans and continents, compiling exhaustive knowledge about its life forms and features, and extended our physical reach through technology, which provides us instantaneous and pervasive access to information about seemingly everything.

Movies are more than a commodity. Movies are to our civilization what dreams and ideals are to individual lives: They express the mystery and help define the nature of who we are and what we are becoming.

Don't let others define you. You define yourself.

I've always believed that the things middle class families struggle with around their kitchen tables should define my work in Washington.

Let me say that I consider myself a deep believer in the reality of God. I might define God quite differently from the way some people in the Christian faith would do so, but I do not doubt the reality of that experience.

In short, you can't let the deadline define the mission. The mission has to define the duration.

I don't like to define my music. To me, music is pure emotion. It's language that can communicate certain emotions and the rhythms cuts across genders, cultures and nationalities. All you need to do is close your eyes and feel those emotions.

I truly believe that women should be financially independent from their men. And let's face it, money gives men the power to run the show. It gives men the power to define value. They define what's sexy. And men define what's feminine. It's ridiculous.

I'm convinced that there's a new way to define capitalism, and that the definition should include three ingredients - that we love our work, that we are building a traditionally successful business, and that we are having some positive impact in the world, whether it's local or global.

This is not a country that has had a tremendous sympathy for poor people, so I think that the notion that somehow we have slipped into an era in which poor people don't matter is not quite the way our history would define it.

What an immense power over the life is the power of possessing distinct aims. The voice, the dress, the look, the very motion of a person, define and alter when he or she begins to live for a reason.

I define friendship as a bond that transcends all barriers. When you are ready to expect anything and everything from friends, good, bad or ugly... that's what I call true friendship.

Of all the myriad ways we define love, there is perhaps none more honest and powerful than this: Great love is rooted in great partnership.

This is how I define grace: you're on the main stage, and it looks like it has been rehearsed 100 times, everything goes so smoothly. That's where I get my confidence and success, from knowing that I have an edge because I know I'm prepared.

Our public schools arbitrarily define science as explaining the world by natural processes alone. In essence, a religion of naturalism is being imposed on millions of students. They need to be taught the real nature of science, including its limitations.

Honestly, being a 5'11" quarterback, not too many people think that you can play in the National Football League. And so for me, you know, I knew that my height doesn't define my skill set, you know? I believed in my talent. I believed in what God gave me. I believed in the knowledge that I have of the game.

I am a teacher. It's how I define myself. A good teacher isn't someone who gives the answers out to their kids but is understanding of needs and challenges and gives tools to help other people succeed. That's the way I see myself, so whatever it is that I will do eventually after politics, it'll have to do a lot with teaching.

I'm a person of faith, and the language that I use to define my faith, the symbols and metaphors that I rely upon to express my faith, are those provided by Islam because they make the most sense to me.

When I define polarities in my work, I actually create the space between things. I point to the question I am actually interested in, without naming it.

I think in some ways we have allowed other people to set the agenda. Other people to define who we are.

Don't let anyone try to tell you who you are. Define yourself.

My main quarrel with liberalism is not that liberalism places great emphasis on individual rights - I believe rights are very important and need to be respected. The issue is whether it is possible to define and justify our rights without taking a stand on the moral and even sometimes religious convictions that citizens bring to public life.

We left my birthplace, Brooklyn, New York, in 1939 when I was 13. I enjoyed the ethnic variety and the interesting students in my public school, P.S. 134. The kids in my neighborhood were only competitive in games, although unfriendly gangs tended to define the limits of our neighborhood.

It's hard for me to assess what I brought because each time you pick up a camera and point it at a person, you're trying to define that person so to talk generally is difficult because I have to think of a given image in order to conjure up what we're talking about.

A friend once asked me what comedy was. That floored me. What is comedy? I don't know. Does anybody? Can you define it? All I know is that I learned how to get laughs, and that's all I know about it. You have to learn what people will laugh at, then proceed accordingly.

As we have sought through the centuries to define ourselves as human beings and as nations through the prisms of history and literature, no small part of that effort has drawn us to the subject of war. We might even say that the humanities began with war and from war, and have remained entwined with it ever since.

'Niggy Tardust' is the voice of a generation, a generation that does not define itself simply by what it's born into.

In a basic sense, 'A Little Life' is a homage to how my friends and I live our lives. I wanted to push past the definitions of how we typically define friendship. It's a different version of adulthood, but it's no less important and no less legitimate than anyone else's.

Do not let where you come from define you, but never forget the values you learned from your close community.

A director should not define everything. For me, the movie is a form of a question I pose to the others or to the audience. I want to ask their opinion on my point of view and discuss it with them.

Creation's gold mine is in you. The key is deliberate intention. Whatever your dream may be at this moment, identify it. If you cannot define your desire, it can never become a reality.

There are certain characteristics that define a good chimp mother. She is patient, she is protective but she is not over-protective - that is really important. She is tolerant, but she can impose discipline. She is affectionate. She plays. And the most important of all: she is supportive.

I define a 'good person' as somebody who is fully conscious of their own limitations. They know their strengths, but they also know their 'shadow' - they know their weaknesses. In other words, they understand that there is no good without bad. Good and evil are really one, but we have broken them up in our consciousness. We polarize them.

The danger with playing a part that defines you is that it swallows up everything else.

The history of ideas is littered with the corpses of those who have tried to define culture.

Now that I have a daughter, I've been thinking about how I'll define beauty to her. I watched a video of Kendall when she was three, and she was putting on makeup. I don't know how I feel about that. But my daughter already watches me do it. When do you let them start wearing it? I don't know yet.

We define organic order as the kind of order that is achieved when there is a perfect balance between the needs of the parts, and the needs of the whole.

Women's art, political art - those categorisations perpetuate a certain kind of marginality which I'm resistant to. But I absolutely define myself as a feminist.

Back when I used to struggle with how I could define myself in the film business, I knew that I'd always remain true to myself and what I wanted to accomplish. The style of action I showcase is quite different from other stars we usually see, but I'm remaining true to myself, and hopefully this comes across.

As I say to our own team: 'Never protect your past, never define yourself by a single product, and always continue to steward for the long-term. Keep moving towards the future.'

The time for invisible boundaries that guard the 'purity' of gaming as a niche subculture is over. The violent macho power fantasy will no longer define what gaming is all about.

The launch of iPhone is very possibly bigger than the launch of the first Apple II or the first Mac. Steve Jobs's genius is his ability to use technology to create products that define fundamental cultural shifts.

When people think girl adventurers, they tend to think of a spunky, plucky tom-boy with a chip on her shoulder. I'm not saying that this makes for a dull character, but I think other types of adventurous girls exist. It's easy to fall into well-established tropes, believing that the tropes of a genre define the genre itself.

We entered the 20th century trying to deal with three ideas purporting to define or describe or explain three spheres of action, development and conflict: Darwin on the natural world, Freud on the internal world, Marx on the economic world.

I think people are very stiff. Money makes people stiff, and we want it, and we have to pay the penalty. I never agreed with stiffness. I think people have an understanding of what their life is. I define success by being a realist and not humiliating people. I'm a revolutionary - but not in the political sense.

In every generation, there are horrors that define an age and events that scar the global conscience.

There are so many different kinds of relationships, so it's sort of difficult to define what is considered normal.

I don't think that trauma is an illusion; there is no question in my mind that circumstances beyond our control can shape and define us. But ultimately, we make choices about letting ourselves be defined by our pasts.

My so-called 'reservations' and personal comfort zones can't define my work. That's not being professional. I feel that even if an actor is cast for the lead role or for any other part in the film, it is his job to do the film and not create an issue.

If you can't define a winning exit strategy for the American people, where we somehow come out ahead, then we're wasting our money, and we're wasting our strategic resources.

If I couldn't use food or love to define contentment, I would use reading.

I've been around a long time, and I've been interested in memory for a long time. And one of my earlier interests in molecular biology of memory led me to define the switch that converts short term to long term memory.

When it comes to women, there has been a tendency to define women in sports in the context of their relationships - they watch games because their husbands watch. They're interested because their kids play a sport. They buy tickets to a sporting event because it's a way to spend time with family.

I have a 2-year-old son, and I know I'm dealing with a big, grand word when I can't point to the thing when I define it. Right? If he wants to know what a chair is, I can point to the chair. If he wants to know what religion is, I can't point to anything in particular. The same is true of the state.

The biased left-wing media does what it wants. That's not going to define me or hamper me.

There's so much chaos in life, I think I make music to make things feel calm and sane, to define something, to bring some meaning into it - it's a real peaceful thing to me.

It is impossible to objectively define how free a market is. This is a political definition. Government is always involved, and those free marketers are as politically motivated as anyone.

I like knowing that the further back one traces any lineage, the narrower the path grows, to the haunt of just a few shaggy ancestors, with luck on their side, little gizmos in their cells and a future storied with impulses and choices that will ultimately define them.

You can not define being exactly on time.

I define power as 'control over one's life.' A balanced life is far superior to the male definition of power: earning money someone else spends while he dies sooner.

I define myself from a vision, from a point of view of life.

A part of me is missing when I can't ski, but I've learned there's more to define me and make me happy, like stand-up paddling and Jet Skiing - things I'd never done before. Or being with people I love and just enjoying life.

We are more than just flesh and bones. There's a certain spiritual nature and something of the mind that we can't measure. We can't find it. With all our sophisticated equipment, we cannot monitor or define it, and yet it's there.

I'm interested in what it means to live in America. I'm interested in the kind of country that we live in and leave our kids. I'm interested in trying to define what that country is. I got the chutzpa or whatever you want to say to believe that if I write a really good about it, it's going to make a difference.

The American Right has an amazing ability to lionize leaders whose lives are the precise antithesis of the political values that define their image.

Here's the thing: When you become brilliant at listening, people feel that you care about them. When they feel you care about them, they begin to care about you. And when people care about you, your success becomes a part of how they define their success.

When we are kids, we imagine that to define ourselves or to find ourselves means charting your own individuality, making your own destiny, and actually running away from your parents and your home and what you grew up with. Of course, as the years go on, we come to find that we become our parents.

If you have not taken the time to define what happiness means to you, what have your spent your whole life pursuing?

There is nothing more difficult to define than an aphorism.

We're so much more likely to feel sympathy for an animal than another person; thus, the best fiction uses animals to define truly humane behavior.

You couldn't define the '80s when the '80s were happening. We kept changing. We had shoulder pads, then we didn't. It was revealing, and then it was decoration. It was a lot of things at once. It was defined when it was over.

At a time when we aim to accelerate our efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and define a bold agenda for the period beyond 2015, the role of charity can and should grow. U.N. bodies such as the U.N. Volunteers Programme and UNICEF offer venues for people across the world to get involved.

John F. Kennedy, the man I had thought would define the political ideal for the rest of my days, was suddenly gone in the senseless violence of a single moment.

There's a certain spiritual nature and something of the mind that we can't measure. We can't find it. With all our sophisticated equipment, we cannot monitor or define it, and yet it's there.

I have a strong sense of myself. That gives me a sense of security, you know? If I define myself by things that are always changing, like the public's opinion, or what I'm wearing, or what job I'm doing, there's no stability in that.

One of the great things we do is recognize people. Those things are greatly appreciated by family and friends and colleagues. It's so hard to define every certain instance. We have to use our own good judgment.

One of the goals of our research on software quality and security is to define a baseline so that people can measure software reliability in both open source and proprietary software projects. No technology can find all bugs in software, but we have collected a critical mass of data through an automated and repeatable analysis framework to show how software quality can be concretely assessed, compared, and ultimately improved.

Only when the privileged classes perform military service, only when elite youth are on the firing line, does the country define the cause as worth young peoples' blood and do war losses become acceptable, ... the answer to what constitutes vital national interests is found not so much on the cause, itself, but in who is willing to die for that cause.

I would define true courage to be a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.

I wish there were a rulebook for intimacy. Some kind of guide to tell you when you've crossed the line. It would be nice if you could see it coming, and I don't know how you fit it on a map. You take it where you can get it, and keep it as long as you can. And as for rules, maybe there are none. Maybe the rules of intimacy are something you have to define for yourself.

Nobody on the committee could even define what it means. So how can an employer?

Nick Cardy's work helped define some of the things we see in comics today and take for granted. He broke out of the mold in terms of covers and layout and created a truly interactive experience for the reader that directly points back to his time with the Eisner studio.

Lifting sanctions is a goal we have supported for a long time, ... Now it is up to the United Nations to define the modalities of the lifting of sanctions.

Obviously we wanted to go further, but one game didn't define our season. Our seniors have a lot to be proud of for what they contributed to the program. Our student body was unbelievable. When you have a good product, they'll want to support it.

Only actions will dispel critics who believe I have a political agenda, which I do not have. I want to define my tenure in as open a way as I can.

One of his frustrations was that everybody wanted to hire consultants, sit around ... and talk endlessly about problems rather than define solutions.

Montanans believe in the right to make a good life for their families. How they define a family should be their business and their business alone. I'm proud to support marriage equality because no one should be able to tell a Montanan or any American who they can love and who they can marry.

No one knows for sure about the future. But if you feel reluctant to plan something about it, then someone with guts would define it for you.

No one has actually seen every letter of this agreement, which of course makes it very dangerous because the devil is in the details, and the specifics of how you define words is tremendously critical.

Of course I'm for Turkey joining the EU. But it's too simple to say that will make us all well-off and solve all our problems. Since the referendums in France and the Netherlands, Europe is preoccupied with itself. Various ideas are competing with one another about the character of the Union. Will Europe define itself exclusively through the past ? This is a conservative view and can ultimately be reduced to discussions on agricultural policy and the distribution of funds. This is always the case with short-term politics. But in the long term Europe needs an all-encompassing vision of itself and for that reason I recommend that Turkey joins.

Politics is all about defining yourself and the party you lead before others can define you.

Politics isn't a reality show or a gong show. It's not show business for ugly people. It's the arena where we define our common life in a rough and ready contest that has winners and losers.

Now there are a whole lot of things that in my busy life I have not had time to study into all the details so that I can define my belief.

Now that Ricky got done, we see that really helping define that market. Their career numbers and the fact they've both had really one year as the No. 1 guy is incredibly similar.

Philosophically, I don't there's a lot of difference in terms of what we like to do. His knowledge of the league and being able to define things internally in the organization, so you have everybody on the same page, are probably his greatest assets. That and recognition of what people can do - the strength of players, coaches and people in the organization - and putting them in position where they can have success doing it.