Reference state is the intentional use of one thing to indicate something else. It may refer to:
- Reference point (General usage)
- Standard state (Chemistry usage)
Famous quotes containing the words reference and/or state:
“Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)