“Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers — not the defined.”

Beloved (1987)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers — not the defined." by Toni Morrison?

Toni Morrison184

American writer 1931–2019

Related quotes

“Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved

“Tommy Hearns seemed like an indestructible machine, so to beat him, I think that was my defining moment, the pinnacle.”

Sugar Ray Leonard (1956) American boxer

Sugar Ray Leonard, Oct 6, 2006 interview http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20061006/ai_n16774982

“A defining mark of poetry is that it defies definition.”

Dennis O'Driscoll (1954–2012) Irish poet, critic

Introduction - ' The Bloodaxe Book of Poetry Quotations' ed. Dennis O'Driscoll 2006
Other Quotes

“Accept no one’s definition of you, define yourself.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

“The limits of the body seem well defined enough as definitions go, but definitions seldom go far.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Ramblings In Cheapside (1890)

“Beat a dog once and you only have to show him the whip.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Source: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)

“Every definition implies an axiom, since it asserts the existence of the object defined.”

Henri Poincaré book Science and Method

Part II. Ch. 2 : Mathematical Definitions and Education, p. 131
Science and Method (1908)
Context: Every definition implies an axiom, since it asserts the existence of the object defined. The definition then will not be justified, from the purely logical point of view, until we have proved that it involves no contradiction either in its terms or with the truths previously admitted.