Denigrated Defined Quotes

Once upon a time black male "cool" was defined by the ways in which black men confronted hardships of life without allowing their spirits to be ravaged. They took the pain of it and used it alchemically to turn the pain into gold. That burning process required high heat. Black male cool was defined by the ability to withstand the heat and remain centered. It was defined by black male willingness to confront reality, to face the truth, and bear it not by adopting a false pose of cool while feeding on fantasy; not by black male denial or by assuming a "poor me" victim identity. It was defined by individual black males daring to self-define rather than be defined by others. ~ Bell Hooks

Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims. ~ Derrick Jensen

There is no such things as race," said Morrison. "Racism is a construct; a social construct. And it has benefits. Money can be made off of it. People who don't like themselves can feel better because of it. It can describe certain kinds of behavior that are wrong or misleading. So [racism] has a social function. But race can only be defined as a human being ~ Toni Morrison

His work was defined by emphasis on the subversiveness philosophy, which asks questions, as opposed to the self-satisfaction of politics, which believes it has answers and insists on them. ~ Harvey Mansfield

I feel like reading really defined me as a writer because I lived my life outside of my own body for so much of my life and I loved it. I've always been a reader. I think living all those stories served me to naturally take that next step to creating. ~ Stephenie Meyer

Never allow the opinions of other people defined your state of mind. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

We must never confuse the positive things that America does with the kingdom of God, for the kingdom of God is not centered on being morally, politically, or socially positive *relative* to other versions of the kingdom of the world. Rather, the kingdom of God is centered on being *beautiful*, as defined by Jesus Christ dying on a cross for those who crucified him. ~ Gregory A. Boyd

Through Plato, Aristotle came to believe in God; but Plato never attempted to prove His reality. Aristotle had to do so. Plato contemplated Him; Aristotle produced arguments to demonstrate Him. Plato never defined Him; but Aristotle thought God through logically, and concluded with entire satisfaction to himself that He was the Unmoved Mover. ~ Edith Hamilton

Remorse is a violent dyspepsia of the mind, But it is very difficult to treat because it cannot even be defined, Because everything is not gold that glisters and everything is not a tear that glistens, And one man's remorse is another man's reminiscence ~ Ogden Nash

Women's bodies are arranged, maimed, jeopardized, and tailored for the purposes of men-defined eroticism. [...] We dye our hair, smear our lips, paint our cheeks, stop our
sweat, perfume our genitals, unkink our hair, and pluck our brows. ~ Bonnie Burstow

I always defined myself in terms of my talkativeness, and being without a voice hits me in a number of ways. ~ John Diamond

God loves us too much to leave us in the hell of unhappiness that comes from trying to do his job. Into the slavish misery of our ladder-defined lives, God condescends. ~ Tullian Tchividjian

And then I got to thinking about how, if someone met me for the first time now, they would need to know about Uncle Ed and my parents in order to understand me. Sometimes it feels as though I'm defined by all the people I've lost , like one of those negative-space pictures, where what's not there is just as important as what is. ~ Claire Wong

There are strengths in Islamic tradition. Islam actually, as a monotheistic religion, which defined man as a responsible agent by itself, created the idea of the individual in the Middle East and saved it from the communitarianism, the collectivism of the tribe. ~ Mustafa Akyol

Healthy" and "diseased," as Susan Sontag points out ... are often subjective judgments that society makes for its own purposes. Women have long been defined as sick as a means of subjecting them to social control. ~ Naomi Wolf

Reality is far more vicious than Russian roulette. First, it delivers the fatal bullet rather infrequently, like a revolver that would have hundreds, even thousands of chambers instead of six. After a few dozen tries, one forgets about the existence of a bullet, under a numbing false sense of security. Second, unlike a well-defined precise game like Russian roulette, where the risks are visible to anyone capable of multiplying and dividing by six, one does not observe the barrel of reality. One is capable of unwittingly playing Russian roulette - and calling it by some alternative "low risk" game. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

There is a defined gulf
Between credit and character
If you doubt this, ask any banker;
He will advise that character is nice
But it is not collateral. ~ Evan Rhys

These homes of love we build, house many rooms, sanded and painted in the shades and colours of our life, furnished with those moments that, however inconsequential they may seem to others, have in fact, defined us. ~ Annie Proulx

If the derived class isn't going to adhere completely to the same interface contract defined by the base class, inheritance is not the right implementation technique. Consider containment or making a change further up the inheritance hierarchy. ~ Steve McConnell

The old botanical metaphors for memory, with their emphasis on continual, indeterminate organic growth, are, it turns out, remarkably apt. In fact, they seem to be more fitting than our new, fashionably high-tech metaphors, which equate biological memory with the precisely defined bits of digital data stored in databases and processed by computer chips. Governed by highly variable biological signals, chemical, electrical, and genetic, every aspect of human memory - the way it's formed, maintained, connected, recalled - has almost infinite gradations. Computer memory exists as simple binary bits - ones and zeros - that are processed through fixed circuits, which can be either open or closed but nothing in between. ~ Nicholas Carr

To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny. ~ Simone Weil

Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious and their method too clearly defined. One exhausts what they have to say in a very short time, and then they become as tedious as one's relations. ~ Oscar Wilde

I'm against redefining marriage historically 5,000 years ... because then it'll be re-defined. What if it's between a brother and a sister? ~ Rick Warren

The Christian church does not ask the U. S. Supreme Court, or any other human court, what marriage is. Marriage is a pre-political institution defined by our Creator - for His glory and for human flourishing. ~ Albert Mohler

The only thing you need to be certain of is that you can be whatever you want yourself to be and this does not need to be defined by who you were. ~ Brenda J. Bentley

Life changes. It's usually in the blink of an eye. One minute everything's fine, if not stagnant; then, it's not. But your character's not defined by what happens to you but by how you respond to those emotionally significant events. Who will you become when your life turns on a dime? ~ Bobby Cole

Jim Crow and mass incarceration have similar political origins...both caste systems were born in part, due to desire among white elites to exploit the resentments, vulnerabilities and racial biases of poor and working-class whites for political or economic gain. Segregation laws were proposed as part of a deliberate and strategic effort to deflect anger and hostility that have been brewing against the white elite away from them and toward African Americans. The birth of mass incarceration can be traced to a similar political dynamic. Conservatives in the 1960s and 1970s sought to appeal to the racial biases and economic vulnerabilities of poor and working-class whites through racially coded rhetoric on crime and welfare. In both cases, the racial opportunists offered few, if any, economic reforms to address the legitimate economic anxieties of poor and working-class whites, proposing instead a crackdown on the racially defined "others." In the early years of Jim Crow, conservative white elites competed with each other by passing ever more stringent and oppressive Jim Crow legislation. A century later, politicians in the early years of the drug war competed with each other to prove who could be tougher on crime by passing ever harsher drug laws- a thinly veiled effort to appeal to poor and working-class whites who, once again, proved they were willing to forego economic and structural reform in exchange for an apparent effort to put blacks back "in their place. ~ Michelle Alexander

Basically, success the way we've defined it is no longer sustainable. It's no longer sustainable for human beings or for societies. ~ Arianna Huffington

I think virtue is the quintessence of perfection, and the One who created it definitely stands beyond that value. Virtues like honesty, loyalty and courtesy, do not have to be completely defined by their relation to extrinsic things. Even if they are not realized by actions, their good value remains. ~ Aishah Madadiy

A circle is the only geometric shape defined by its centre. No chicken and egg about it, the centre came first, the circumference follows. The earth, by definition, has a centre. And only the fool that knows it can go wherever he pleases, knowing the centre will hold him down, stop him flying out of orbit. But when your sense of centre shifts, comes whizzing to the surface, the balance has gone. The balance has gone. The balance my baby has gone. ~ Sarah Kane

The function of a leader within any institution: to provide that regulation through his or her non-anxious, self-defined presence. ~ Edwin H. Friedman

Like anyone else, a lot of what I do and how I think has been shaped by my family and my overall life experience. Many who know me say I am also defined by my curiosity and thirst for learning. I buy more books than I can finish. I sign up for more online courses than I can complete. I fundamentally believe that if you are not learning new things, you stop doing great and useful things. So family, curiosity and hunger for knowledge all define me. ~ Satya Nadella

Punishment demotivates when it comes from people rather than a system of well-defined rules ~ Yegor Bugayenko

Wilderness is not defined by the absence of certain activities, but rather by the presence of certain unique and invaluable characteristics. ~ Nick Rahall

Difference between author & reader are only defined by their Intent. ~ Prem

God shows covenant faithfulness to families through the generations, but in the last analysis the people of God are defined Christocentrically, not genealogically. The issue is not birth from the flesh but birth from the Spirit (John 3:6), just as the circumcision that marks God's people is not a fleshly surgery but a cleansing of the heart by the Spirit (Rom. 2:28-29; cf. Phil. 3:2-3). ~ Dennis E. Johnson

Nobody should be entirely defined by one thing ~ Lea Michele

How could the colonists starve in the midst of plenty? One reason was that the English feared leaving Jamestown to fish, because Powhatan's fighters were waiting outside the colony walls. A second reason was that a startlingly large proportion of the colonists were gentlemen, a status defined by not having to perform manual labor. ~ Charles C. Mann

I think you're defined as a company by what you choose to do and what you choose not to do. ~ Mark Pincus

Although you may have never sat down and defined what your philosophy is, it is fully operative and working in your life at all times. It deals with what you believe about the world in which you live, about its people and events, about how you affect them. ~ Chris Prentiss

Beauty and ugliness have one origin.
Name beauty, and ugliness is.
Recognizing virtue recognizes evil.

Is and is not produce one another.
The difficult is born in the easy,
long is defined by short, the high by the low. ~ Sam Hamill

The Church of Christ, zealous and cautious guardian of the dogmas deposited with it, never changes any phase of them. It does not diminish them or add to them; it neither trims what seems necessary now grafts things superfluous ... but it devotes all its diligence to one aim: To treat tradition faithfully and wisely; to consolidate and to strengthen what already was clear; and to guard what already was confirmed and defined. ~ St. Vincent

Weren't movies his generation's faith anyway- its true religion? Wasn't the theatre our temple, the one place we enter separately but emerge from two hours later together, with the same experience, same guided emotions, same moral? A million schools taught ten million curricula, a million churches featured ten thousand sects with a billion sermons- but the same movie showed in every mall in the country. And we all saw it. That summer, the one you'll never forget, every movie house beamed the same set of thematic and narrative images ... flickering pictures stitched in our minds that replaced our own memories, archetypal stories that become our shared history, that taught us what to expect from life, that defined our values. What was that but a religion? ~ Jess Walter

I guess that after three straight years of my not being anything -- not emo, not Christian, not prep, not jock, not ghetto, not punk, not hipster, not skank, not prude, just a half-assed band geek -- no one can believe I'd do anything so well defined as lie. I like my new superpower. ~ Sarah Bird

Who defined me? My culture, a culture of mercy, a living codex. I am a unique culture of one, from everywhere. I am her map and her self. I am everyone in the story; I am the story. ~ Alice Notley

A pale, sweaty Corona bottle invaded my field of vision. It was clamped in a hand attached to a muscular arm with pale blond hair.
"Peace offering," Curran said.
Did I hear him come in? No.
I took the beer. He paused on the other side of the tub. He was wearing a white gym towel. "I'm about to take the towel off and hop in," he said. "Fair warning."
There are times in life when shrugging takes nearly all of your will. "I've seen you naked."
"Didn't want you to run away screaming or anything."
"You flatter yourself."
He took the towel off.
I hadn't exactly forgotten what he looked like without clothes. I just didn't remember it being quite so tempting. He was built with survival in mind: strong but flexible, defined but hardly slender. You could bounce a quarter from his abs.
Curran stepped into the tub. He was obviously in no hurry.
It was like walking on a high bridge: don't look down. Definitely not below his waist . . . Oh my.
He sank into the hot water near me. I remembered to breathe. "How's your back?"
"It's fine," he said. "Thanks."
"Don't mention it." It had to be sore.
"Does your side hurt?"
"No."
His smile told me he knew we were both full of it. ~ Ilona Andrews

Most of us have complicated backstories, messy histories, multiple narratives. It was a high-wire strategy, for Obama, this invocation of our collective human messiness. His enemies latched on to its imprecision, emphasizing the exotic, un-American nature of Dream City, this ill-defined place where you could be from Hawaii and Kenya, Kansas and Indonesia all at the same time, where you could jive talk like a street hustler and orate like a senator. ~ Zadie Smith

He has defined cricket in his fabulous, impeccable manner. He is to batting what Shane Warne is to bowling. ~ Richie Benaud

Many novelists take well-defined, precise characters, whose stories are sometimes of mediocre interest, and place them in an important historical context, which remains secondary in spite of everything. ~ Raymond Queneau