Negation/definition

Famous quotes containing the words negation and/or definition:

“Friendship, according to Proust, is the negation of that irremediable solitude to which every human being is condemned.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)

“The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.”
—William James (1842–1910)