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Function Quotes

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Function Quotes

“The prime function of the children's book writer is to write a book that is so absorbing, exciting, funny, fast and beautiful that the child will fall in love with it. And that first love affair between the young child and the young book will lead hopefully to other loves for other books and when that happens the battle is probably won. The child will have found a crock of gold. He will also have gained something that will help to carry him most marvelously through the tangles of his later years. Roald Dahl”

WritingYearsFirstsChildrenBookHelpingHappensBeautifulYoungFallFoundBattleGoldFunctionExcitingFalling In LoveAffairHopefullyPrimeFirst LoveLove AffairAbsorbingYoung ChildrenChildren's Books
Author:Roald Dahl
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“Remember laughing? Laughter enhances the blood flow to the body’s extremities and improves cardiovascular function. Laughter releases endorphins and other natural mood elevating and pain-killing chemicals, improves the transfer of oxygen and nutrients to internal organs. Laughter boosts the immune system and helps the body fight off disease, cancer cells as well as viral, bacterial and other infections. Being happy is the best cure of all diseases!”

WellsHelpingBodyPainRememberFightingNaturalLaughingBloodDiseaseLaughterFlowFunctionKillingCancerMoodCuresReleaseCellsInternalsChemicalsOrgansOxygenImmuneTransfersBoostInfectionImmune SystemNutrientsExtremityElevatingViralEndorphinsBlood FlowCardiovascular
Author:Patch Adams
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“The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society; if is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment from which forms the secret of civilization.”

IfsRealSchoolFormMoneySecretEducationTeachTeacherGrowingFineCivilizationFunctionUniversityReal LifeOrgansGraduationCentrePolitePublic SchoolAdjustmentGrowing Knowledge
Book:The Souls of Black Folk
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“You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live”

LifePainHappinessDeathWishFearAchievementFunctionThreatRewardsSakePunishmentLive LifeNovelistsEarningAvoidingIncentivesPursuit Of HappinessEscapingFamous WomenAvoiding Death
Book:For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)
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“For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”

IfsThinkingHumansLongDoneRunningHuman BeingsPovertySecurityIgnoranceMassFunctionBasesEnjoyedMinoritiesRealisingLeisureLong RunsSooner Or LaterPrivilegedIgnorance In 19841984 Important
Book:Animal Farm and 1984
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“Thought is no longer theoretical. As soon as it functions it offends or reconciles, attracts or repels, breaks, dissociates, unites or reunites; it cannot help but liberate or enslave. Even before prescribing, suggesting a future, saying what must be done, even before exhorting or merely sounding an alarm, thought, at the level of its existence, in its very dawning, is in itself an action-a perilous act.”

DoneHelpingActionLevelsExistenceBreakFunctionTheoreticalAlarmsReconcileSuggestingPrescribing
Book:Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews
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“At first glance, the key and the lock it fits may seem very different," Sazed said. "Different in shape, different in function, different in design. The man who looks at them without knowledge of their true nature might think them opposites, for one is meant to open, and the other to keep closed. Yet, upon closer examination he might see that without one, the other becomes useless. The wise man then sees that both lock and key were created for the same purpose.”

ThinkingMenFirstsLooksMaySaidDifferentSeemsMightPurposeWiseDesignKeysFitShapesOppositesFunctionUselessLocksGlancesExaminationTrue NatureLock And Key
Book:Mistborn Trilogy
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“There was a sergeant at a desk. I knew he was a sergeant because I recognized the marks on his uniform, and I knew it was a desk because it's always a desk. There's always someone at a desk, except when it's a table that functions as a desk. You sit behind a desk, and everyone knows you're supposed to be there, and that you're doing something that involves your brain. It's an odd, special kind of importance. I think everyone should get a desk; you can sit behind it when you feel like you don't matter.”

ThinkingKnowsFeelsShouldKindMatterBehindsBrainSpecialLike YouFunctionImportanceMarkTablesSupposed To BeOddUniformsDesksSergeants
Book:Iorich
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“How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.”

IfsGivingPersonsArtImportantFeelingsReligiousViewsAliveFunctionNotionTheologyCosmicDefiniteArt And ScienceReceptive
Book:The Albert Einstein Collection: Essays in Humanism, The Theory of Relativity, and The World As I See It
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“Christianity taught us to see the eye of the lord looking down upon us. Such forms of knowledge project an image of reality, at the expense of reality itself. They talk figures and icons and signs, but fail to perceive forces and flows. They bind us to other realities, and especially the reality of power as it subjugates us. Their function is to tame, and the result is the fabrication of docile and obedient subjects.”

RealityEyeFormForceResultsChristianityLordFailingSubjectsFiguresTaughtProjectsFlowFunctionPerceiveExpensesIconsObedientTaught UsLooking DownDocileFabrication
Book:Anti-Oedipus
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“The various forms of education or ‘normalization’ imposed upon an individual consist in making him or her change points of subjectification, always moving towards a higher, nobler one in closer conformity with the supposed ideal. Then from the point of subjectification issues a subject of enunciation, as a function of a mental reality determined by that point. Then from the subject of enunciation issues a subject of the statement, in other words, a subject bound to statements in conformity with a dominant reality”

RealityMovingFormIndividualIssuesSubjectsHigherIdealsFunctionBoundsVariousDeterminedStatementsConformityDominantAlways Moving
Author:Gilles Deleuze
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“Poirot said placidly, “One does not, you know, employ merely the muscles. I do not need to bend and measure the footprints and pick up the cigarette ends and examine the bent blades of grass. It is enough for me to sit back in my chair and think. It is this – ” he tapped his egg-shaped head – “this, that functions!”

ThinkingKnowsNeedsDoeSaidEndsEnoughPicksFunctionGrassMusclesChairsEggsCigaretteBentBladesFootprintBlades Of Grass
Book:Five Little Pigs (Poirot)
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“Wizards don't believe in gods in the same way that most people don't find it necessary to believe in, say, tables. They know they're there, they know they're there for a purpose, they'd probably agree that they have a place in a well-organised universe, but they wouldn't see the point of believing, of going around saying "O great table, without whom we are as naught." Anyway, either the gods are there whether you believe in them or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business and, as it were, eat off your knees.”

PeopleKnowsWayBelieveWellsWholeMightPurposeUniverseBeliefFunctionAgreeTablesDon't BelieveKneesBelieve In GodWizardsOrganised
Book:Reaper Man: A Novel of Discworld
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“The brain is more than an assemblage of autonomous modules, each crucial for a specific mental function. Every one of these functionally specialized areas must interact with dozens or hundreds of others, their total integration creating something like a vastly complicated orchestra with thousands of instruments, an orchestra that conducts itself, with an ever-changing score and repertoire.”

BrainCreatingAreasFunctionInstrumentsComplicatedScoreCrucialDozenIntegrationOrchestraAutonomousCreating SomethingAssemblage
Author:Oliver Sacks
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“The civil magistrate cannot function without some ethical guidance, without some standard of good and evil. If that standard is not to be the revealed law of God (which, we must note, was addressed specifically to perennial problems in political morality), then what will it be? In some form or expression it will have to be the law of man (or men) — the standard of self-law or autonomy.”

IfsMenSelfFormLawEvilForceExpressionStandardsFunctionVainGuidanceGood And EvilEthicalAutonomyBrutesCommonwealthAutonomousMagistratesBrute Force
Author:Greg L. Bahnsen
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“Religion is not about accepting twenty impossible propositions before breakfast, but about doing things that change you. It is a moral aesthetic, an ethical alchemy. If you behave in a certain way, you will be transformed. The myths and laws of religion are not true because they they conform to some metaphysical, scientific or historical reality but because they are life enhancing. They tell you how human nature functions, but you will not discover their truth unless you apply these myths and doctrines to your own life and put them into practice.”

IfsWayLifeHumansRealityTruthLawCertainReligionChangeAcceptingMoralPracticeImpossibleHuman NatureAcceptanceEthicsDiscoveryFunctionTwentiesTransformationHistoricalMythDoctrineBehaveBreakfastEthicalAestheticTransformedConformPropositionsMetaphysicalAestheticsAlchemyFamous WomenSelf TransformationSpiritual TransformationEnhancement
Author:Karen Armstrong
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“There is nothing more terrible, I learned, than having to face the objects of a dead man. Things are inert: that have meaning only in function of the life that makes use of them. When that life ends, the things change, even though they remain the same. […] they say something to us, standing there not as objects but as remnants of thought, of consciousness, emblems of the solitude in which a man comes to make decisions about himself.”

MenEndsUseFacesDecisionConsciousnessObjectsTerribleSolitudeStandingFunctionThings ChangeDead ManStanding ThereRemnantsEmblems
Author:Paul Auster
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“Change is freedom, change is life. It's always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. Don't make changes, don't risk disapproval, don't upset your syndics. It's always easiest to let yourself be governed. There's a point, around age twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities. Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to go unbuild walls.”

ThinkingAgeSocialVirtueNiceRiskWallEasierSafeFunctionTwentiesOneselfSettlingUpsetPrisonerOrganismsHierarchyRest Of Your LifeMaking ChangesDisapproval
Author:Ursula K. Le Guin
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“The plants that produce visions can function- for those of us who have inherited the New World Order of barren materialism, cut off from our spiritual heritage by a spiteful culture that gives us nothing but ashes- as the talismans of recognition that awaken our minds to reality.”

WorldGivingMindRealitySpiritualOrderCultureVisionCuttingProduceFunctionPlantRecognitionMaterialismHeritageNew WorldAshesNew World OrderBarrenWorld OrderSpitefulTalismans
Book:Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism
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“I think the function of suffering is to let me know that my perception is skewed; what I’m doing is judging natural events in such a way that I am creating suffering within myself. For instance, you have pain over certain conditions, certain situations that occur. And if you just say ‘ok, here I am, I’m going to experience the pain,’ you don’t suffer. The resistance and the degree of the resistance to the natural phenomenon of life causes tremendous suffering.”

IfsThinkingKnowsWayPainCertainSufferingCausesNaturalSituationConditionsEventsJudgingDegreesPerceptionCreatingLet MeFunctionResistanceInstancePhenomenonHere I AmNatural Phenomena
Author:Hubert Selby, Jr.
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“Whoop-de-do," said Ram. "What?" "I'm celebrating." "Was that irony or loss of mental function?" asked the expendable. "Was that a rhetorical questions, a bit of humor, or a sign that you are losing confidence in me?" "I have no confidence in you, Ram," said the expendable. "Well, thanks." "You're welcome.”

WellsSaidBitsLossLosingFunctionWelcomeCelebrateThanksIronyRhetoricalRamsNo ConfidenceThanks YouExpendablesYou Re WelcomeRhetorical Question
Book:Pathfinder
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“An island can be dreadful for someone from outside. Everything is complete, and everyone has his obstinate, sure and self-sufficient place. Within their shores, everything functions according to rituals that are as hard as rock from repetition, and at the same time they amble through their days as whimsically and casually as if the world ended at the horizon.”

IfsWorldSelfHardRocksFunctionIslandsSufficientHorizonRitualShoreRepetitionSelf SufficientObstinate
Author:Tove Jansson
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“They were viewed very much like castles, I suppose: as crumbling, obsolete relics, with no real modern function other than as tourist attractions. But when the skies darkened and the nation called, both reawoke to the meaning of their existence. One shielded our bodies, the other, our souls.”

RealSoulBodyNationsExistenceSkyModernFunctionAttractionCastlesTouristsObsoleteRelicsCrumbling
Book:World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
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