Definition of Phenomenon

Phenomenon

An appearance; anything visible; whatever, in matter or spirit, is apparent to, or is apprehended by, observation; as, the phenomena of heat, light, or electricity; phenomena of imagination or memory.

That which strikes one as strange, unusual, or unaccountable; an extraordinary or very remarkable person, thing, or occurrence; as, a musical phenomenon.

Related Definitions:

An, Anything, Apparent, Appearance, Apprehended, As, By, Electricity, Extraordinary, Heat, Imagination, In, Is, Light, Matter, Memory, Musical, Observation, Occurrence, Of, One, Or, Person, Phenomena, Phenomenon, Remarkable, Spirit, Strange, That, The, Thing, To, Unaccountable, Unusual, Very, Visible, Whatever, Which

Phenomenon Quotations

The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free.
Swami Vivekananda

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.
Karl Von Clausewitz

Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it.
Pope John Paul II

The simplest and most psychologically satisfying explanation of any observed phenomenon is that it happened that way because someone wanted it to happen that way.
Thomas Sowell

The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.
Maria Montessori

There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or to be acted out under the guise of virtue.
Erich Fromm

In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.
Thomas Carlyle

The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade.
Hannah Arendt

Culture relates to objects and is a phenomenon of the world; entertainment relates to people and is a phenomenon of life.
Hannah Arendt

Instead of seeing depression as a dysfunction, it is a functioning phenomenon. It stops you cold, sets you down, makes you damn miserable.
James Hillman

Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president, from a murderous general or a beloved leader, I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon.
Oriana Fallaci

No phenomenon can be isolated, but has repercussions through every aspect of our lives. We are learning that we are a fundamental part of nature's ecosystems.
Arthur Erickson

Part of our western outlook stems from the scientific attitude and its method of isolating the parts of a phenomenon in order to analyze them.
Arthur Erickson

If that enabled us to predict the succeeding situation with the same approximation, that is all we require, and we should say that the phenomenon had been predicted, that it is governed by the laws.
Henri Poincare

The best way to investigate the elusive phenomenon called the creative process may well be to target all the misconceptions, to explain what the creative process is not.
Lukas Foss

Giving a phenomenon a label does not explain it.
Taylor Caldwell

It has long been known for sure that the sight of tasty food makes a hungry man's mouth water; also lack of appetite has always been regarded as an undesirable phenomenon, from which one might conclude that appetite is essentially linked with the process of digestion.
Ivan Pavlov

Simultaneous contrast is not just a curious optical phenomenon - it is the very heart of painting.
Josef Albers

If sex is such a natural phenomenon, how come there are so many books on how to do it?
Bette Midler

The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.
Tom Wolfe

So, we went from being an Athens band to being a Georgia band to being a Southern band to being an American band from the East Coast to being an American band and now we're kind of an international phenomenon.
Michael Stipe

I did not want to be a tree, a flower or a wave. In a dancer's body, we as audience must see ourselves, not the imitated behavior of everyday actions, not the phenomenon of nature, not exotic creatures from another planet, but something of the miracle that is a human being.
Martha Graham

The most disastrous phenomenon of the current situation is the factor that imperialism is employing for its own ends all the powers of the proletariat, all of its institutions and weapons, which its fighting vanguard has created for its war of liberation.
Clara Zetkin

And of course I've got kids of my own now, and they love me being in the Harry Potter films. I'm now part of a phenomenon. You become incredibly cool to your kids, and you get a young fan base. So you became the cool dad at school. You're suddenly hip.
Gary Oldman

Of course the word chaos is used in rather a vague sense by a lot of writers, but in physics it means a particular phenomenon, namely that in a nonlinear system the outcome is often indefinitely, arbitrarily sensitive to tiny changes in the initial condition.
Murray Gell-Mann

Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity.
Jacques Ellul

Men killing other men really is an extraordinary phenomenon. Why does it happen? And how long has it gone on? And have the motives changed?
John Keegan

We also have a cultural phenomenon: the emergence of a global culture, or of cultural globalization.
Peter L. Berger

What a curious phenomenon it is that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage.
Bruce Barton

The world gets older, without getting either better or worse and so does literature. But I do think that the drab current phenomenon that passes for literary studies in the university will finally provide its own corrective.
Harold Bloom

More Phenomenon Quotations

Phenomenon Translations

phenomenon in Dutch is verschijnsel, fenomeen
phenomenon in German is Erscheinung
phenomenon in Italian is fenomeno

Share with your Friends

Everyone likes a good quote - don't forget to share.