Best function & ideas Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“The idea of changing or improving the world is alien to me and seems ludicrous. Society functions, and always has, without the artist. No artist has ever changed anything for better or worse.”

World Ideas Seems Artist Change Changed Function Aliens Improving

Author:Georg Baselitz

“I never view aesthetic ideas as having an existence purely of their own but as a function they have in connection with political or moral values.”

Ideas Political Values Views Existence Moral Connections Function Aesthetic Moral Values

Author:Antoni Tapies

“There isn't a single government agency that can't function. There's more money in this federal government, there's more money allocated than these people can possibly spend. They have to concoct asinine ways to spend it, like advertising for new food stamp users. I've gotten to the point, I'm just so righteously indignant and offended at the very idea that our government could ever run out of money when we've got a printing press, for crying out loud. Printed three and a half trillion dollars over seven years and flooded Wall Street with it.”

“Some conservatives have expressed outrage that the views of professors are at odds with the views of students, as if ideas were entitled to be represented in proportion to their popularity and students were entitled to professors who share their political or social values. One of the more important functions of college that it exposes young people to ideas and arguments they have not encountered at home is redefined as a problem.”

People Ifs Important Ideas Problem Home Young Political Values Social Views Share Students College Argument Function Proportion Professors Odds Popularity Entitled Outrage Social Values

Author:Ellen Willis

“There are certain functions that the family performs. In the first place the family provides society with an orderly means of reproduction, while at the same time the norms of marriage control the potentially disruptive forces of sexuality. Second, the family provides physical and economic support for the child during the early years of dependence. The child receives its primary socialization in the family, learning the essential ideas and values required for adult life.”

Years Firsts Mean Children Ideas Certain Values Force Support Economic Essentials Adults Function Sexuality Primaries Dependence Norm Reproduction Orderly Disruptive Socialization

Author:Adrian Wilson

“A snowball is simple, direct and familiar to most of us. I use this simplicity as a container for feelings and ideas that function on many levels.”

Ideas Use Feelings Artist Simple Levels Direct Function Simplicity Familiar Containers Snowball

Book:Midsummer Snowballs

Source: Midsummer Snowballs

“The idea that full employment without property ownership will solve the world's problems is utter nonsense. The Keynesian concept that the function of capital is merely to amplify labor, not independently produce wealth is simply blindness.”

World Ideas Problem Wisdom Politics Wealth Economy Produce Concepts Labor Function Property Solve Employment Liberalism Nonsense Ownership Blindness Amplify Property Ownership

Author:Louis O. Kelso

“The idea of prosthetics is a tool. Most people's cell phones are prosthetics. If you leave your cell phone at home, you feel impacted by not having it. It's an important part of your daily function and what you can do in a day.”

Ifs Feels Important Ideas Home Can Do Tools Function Phones Cells Cell Phone Prosthetics

Author:Aimee Mullins

“I respond well to what I read of Immanuel Kants idea that the world as we see it is absolutely a function of the way our brain works. In the modern parlance, its an evolved machine that we carry with us.”

World Way Wells Ideas Brain Modern Machines Function

Author:Bernard Beckett

“Atheism ... in its philosophic aspect refuses allegiance not merely to a definite concept of God, but it refuses all servitude to the God idea, and opposes the theistic principle as such. Gods in their individual function are not half as pernicious as the principle of theism which represents the belief in a supernatural, or even omnipotent, power to rule the earth and man upon it. It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.”

Source: Mother Earth Bulletin

“First comes an idea. Then, characters begin to evolve out of the landscape of that idea. And then, finally, characters dominate: plot is simply a function of what these people might do or be. Everything has to flow from their personalities; otherwise it will not be emotionally engaging, or plausible.”

People Firsts Ideas Character Might Personality Flow Function Landscape Evolve Plot Engaging Plausible

Author:Robert Harris

“I would urge that the yeast of education is the idea of excellence, and the idea of excellence comprises as many forms as there are individuals, each of whom develops his own image of excellence. The school must have as one of its principal functions the nurturing of images of excellence.”

Ideas School Form Individual Education Function Excellence Urges Principal Nurturing Yeast

Author:Jerome Bruner

“Philosophical questions are not by their nature insoluble. They are, indeed, radically different from scientific questions, because they concern the implications and other interrelations of ideas, not the order of physical events; their answers are interpretations instead of factual reports, and their function is to increase not our knowledge of nature, but our understanding of what we know.”

Knows Ideas Different Science Order Understanding Answers Events Concern Function Increase Philosophical Reports Interpretation Implications Factual Philosophical Questions

Author:Susanne Katherina Langer

“The idea that we are "stewards of the earth" is another symptom of human arrogance. Imagine yourself with the task of overseeing your body's physical processes. Do you understand the way it works well enough to keep all its systems in operation? Can you make your kidneys function? Can you control the removal of waste? Are you conscious of the blood flow through your arteries, or the fact that you are losing a hundred thousand skin cells a minute?”

“I love the idea of God, but it's not stylistically in keeping with the way I function. I would describe myself as an enthusiastic agnostic who would be happy to be shown that there is a God. I can see that people who believe in God are happier. ... But I doubt.”

People Way Believe I Can Ideas God Would Be Religious Doubt Function Believe In God Agnostic Enthusiastic Describe Myself

Author:Carrie Fisher

“True is the name for whatever idea starts the verification process, useful is the name for its completed function in experience”

Ideas Truth Names Process Function Verification

Book:Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (New Thought Edition - Secret Library)

Source: Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (New Thought Edition - Secret Library)

“In my experience, you always think you know what you're doing; you always think you can explain, but you always discover, years later, that you didn't and you couldn't. This leads me to suspect that the principal function of human reason is to rationalize what your lizard brain demands of you. That's my idea.”

Thinking Knows Years Humans Ideas Reason Brain Demand Function Suspects Principal Doing You Leading Me Rationalize Lizards Human Reason

Author:Dave Hickey

“The first function of a book review should be, I believe, to give some idea of the contents and character of the book.”

Giving Should Firsts Believe Book Ideas Character I Believe Function Reviews Book Review

Author:Walter Kaufmann

“In doing zazen it is desirable to have a quiet room. You should be temperate in eating and drinking, forsaking all delusive relationships. Setting everything aside, think of neither good nor evil, right nor wrong. Thus having stopped the various functions of your mind, five up even the idea of becoming a Buddha.”

Thinking Should Mind Ideas Evil Rooms Five Becoming Quiet Eating Function Drinking Various Setting Settings Desirable Eating And Drinking Quiet Room

Author:Dogen

“F. Scott Fitzgerald has an indespensible quote: 'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at once and still retain the ability to function'. Or, as I like to call it, 'O.J. killed his wife, and the police are corrupt.'”

Mind Firsts Stills Two Ideas Ability Wife Tests Function Police Rate Scott Fitzgerald

Book:When You Ride Alone You Ride with Bin Laden: What the Government Should be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism

Source: When You Ride Alone You Ride with Bin Laden: What the Government Should be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism

“To turn events into ideas is the function of literature.”

Ideas Turns Literature Events Function

Book:The Life of Reason: Human Understanding

Source: The Life of Reason: Human Understanding

“Taste is the intermediate faculty which connects the active with the passive powers of our nature, the intellect with the senses; and its appointed function is to elevate the images of the latter, while it realizes the ideas of the former.”

Ideas Realizing Taste Function Intellect Active Senses Former Latter Faculty Passive

Book:The Collected works: Shorter works and fragments

Source: The Collected works: Shorter works and fragments

“I don't think that mass drug taking is a good idea. But I think that we must have a deputized minority, a shamanic professional class if you will, whose job is to bring ideas out of the deep black water and show them off to the rest of us and perform for our culture some of the cultural functions that shaman perform in pre-literate cultures.”

Ifs Thinking Ideas Shows Jobs Culture Black Water Class Drug Mass Function Minorities Good Ideas Drug Taking

Author:Terence McKenna

“So what needs to be done is to spread the idea that anxiety is inappropriate. It's sort of like we who are psychedelic have to function as sitters for society, because society is going to thrash, and resist, and think it's dying, and be deluded, and regurgitate unconscious material, and so forth and so on. And the role then, I think, for psychedelic people is to try and spread calm.”

People Thinking Needs Trying Ideas Done Roles Dying Materials Anxiety Function Calm Spread Unconscious Psychedelic Inappropriate Deluded

Author:Terence McKenna

“[in 1998] I know my political ideas affect what I write but I've tried to follow the facts wherever they land. Every topic I've written about begins as a question. How do police departments behave? Why do bureaucracies function the way they do? What moral intuitions do people have? How do courts make their decisions? What do blacks want from the political system? I can honestly say I didn't know the answers to those questions when I began looking into them.”

“Mother is in herself a concrete denial of the idea of sexual pleasure since her sexuality has been placed at the service of reproductive function alone. She is the perpetually violated passive principle; her autonomy has been sufficiently eroded by the presence within her of the embryo she brought to term. Her unthinking ability to reproduce, which is her pride, is, since it is beyond choice, not a specific virtue of her own.”

Has Beens Ideas Mother Choices Term Ability Pleasure Principles Virtue Pride Function Sexuality Denial Concrete Passive Autonomy Embryos

Author:Angela Carter

“When we encounter the world of ideas for the first time, we easily get overwhelmed. Scripture is telling us, 'Don't be distracted by the details. Cut to the core by asking, What is its idol?' Whatever functions as its God substitute will shape everything else.”

World Firsts Ideas Cutting Shapes First Time Function Asking Details Core Scripture Encounters Substitutes Idols Overwhelmed Distracted

Author:Nancy Pearcey

“...the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true.”

“I love lyrics. I've always been averse to the straight lyric idea. I guess a big part of it is, that songs that are literary always turn me off. Because they feel so abstract. Like a song. What is a song? We have to remember what the function of a concert and the function of playing a song for people are. It's all become really abstracted.”

People Feels Ideas Bigs Remember Song Turns Function Abstract Concerts Turn Me

Author:Ian Svenonius

“I can't marry myself to one idea or one form of doing politics or one form of understanding politics. I believe that we have to play the game of strategy, and understand how to move the pieces because this is how the political spectrum functions.”

Believe I Can Ideas Play Moving Form Political Games I Believe Understanding Pieces Function Strategy Spectrum Political Spectrum

Author:Bocafloja

“Since the idea that modification of synaptic function can provide a basis for memory arose shortly after the first anatomical description of the synapse a number of models (Hebb 1949 . . Hayek 1952 . . Kendel 1981) have been proposed in which various cognitive activities are represented by combinations of the firing patterns of individual neurons.”

Firsts Has Beens Ideas Individual Memories Numbers Activity Models Function Bases Patterns Various Combination Description Cognitive Firing Neurons Modification Hayek

Author:Gerald Edelman

“Well, all across the country, this is kind of sad, unemployment offices are swamped with people waiting to file for unemployment insurance. It's gotten so bad that the offices are overwhelmed and can't function. I got an idea. Why don't you hire more people? They're right there in line. Speed this whole thing up!”

People Wells Kind Ideas Country Whole Waiting Lines Office Function Speed Unemployment Overwhelmed Files

Author:Jay Leno

“The principal function of form is to advance our understanding. It is the organization of a piece which helps the listener to keep the idea in mind, to follow its development, its growth, its elaboration, its fate.”

Mind Ideas Helping Form Understanding Growth Pieces Fate Development Organization Function Principal Listeners

Author:Arnold Schoenberg

“I do think that it is legitimate to talk of goals and functions in nature, and that these things can be made sense of in naturalistic terms. There is nothing at all contrary to naturalism in the idea of goal-directed systems.”

Thinking Made Ideas Goal Term Function Contrary Naturalism

Author:Hilary Kornblith

“I think we should be worried about the fact that we have become, as a society, very focused on the way people look, the way they dress. I do think we should worry about that because we should be worried about content. We should be worried about ideas. We should not be putting form over function.”

People Thinking Way Should Looks Ideas Facts Form Worry Function Dresses Focused Worried

Author:Christy Clark

“The human condition is what it is. We can see beauty and wonder in the world, but we also face imminent death and uncertainty, and we often need to sidestep the idea of time and communicate with each other, not with words but with a sense of community and union. I don't want to make an overreaching statement, but I think that's the function of culture.”

Thinking World Want Needs Humans Ideas Faces Culture Community Wonder Conditions Function Unions Communicate Statements Uncertainty Human Condition Overreaching Imminent Death

Author:Justin Adams

“Where are the leaders who can speak to the idea that it is not alien to American interests, but very much in our socioeconomic interests - not to mention our spiritual health - to integrate immigrants, that our nation functions best when we welcome newcomers and help them participate fully in our society?”

Ideas Helping Spiritual Speak Nations Interest Leader Function Welcome Aliens Our Society Immigrants Integrating Spiritual Health Newcomers

Author:Andrew Lam

“There are estimates that we daily walked for 10 - 20 kilometers for hundreds of thousands of years. The world's best problem solving machinery grew up under conditions of consistent, strenuous physical activity. It makes sense that when we don't recreate the environments in which the organ was forged, we get a loss of function. And that when we do restore those environments, we get that function back. The effects of aerobic exercise on executive function skills is a powerful empirical example of this idea.”

“Today we no longer know what to call art, what its function is and even less what function it will have in the future. We know only that it is something dynamic - unlike many ideas that have governed us.”

Knows Art Ideas Today Function

Author:Michelangelo Antonioni

“There are certain conceptual powers in this project, like the relationship of glass to sand, and the idea of putting glass back into the earth, which is where it comes from, which are related to the whole concept of I Am. So there's that one below-surface idea, and then there's these other practical and more pragmatic ideas about how the light functions and the geometry and mathematics behind the reverberation of light from the surface outward.”

Ideas Whole Light Earth Certain Behinds Projects Concepts Function Mathematics Glasses Surface Practicals Related Sand Geometry Pragmatic Reverberation

Author:Tavares Strachan

“In my view, the argument from parsimony is really no argument at all - it typically functions only to shut down more interesting discussion. If history is any guide, it's never a good idea to assume that a scientiﬁc problem is cornered.”

Ifs Ideas Problem Interesting Views Argument Function Assuming Guides Discussion Good Ideas Cornered Parsimony

Book:Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain

Source: Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain

“In Pakistan, many of the young people read novels because in the novels, not just my novels but the novels of many other Pakistani writers, they encounter ideas, notions, ways of thinking about the world, thinking about their society that are different. And fiction functions in a countercultural way as it does in America and certainly as it did in the, you know, '60s.”

People Thinking Knows World Way Doe Ideas Different America Young Fiction Novel Function Notion Encounters Pakistan Way Of Thinking

Author:Mohsin Hamid

“This kind of overall way of thinking is not only a fertile source of new theoretical ideas: it is needed for the human mind to function in a generally harmonious way, which could in turn help to make possible an orderly and stable society.”

Thinking Way Mind Humans Kind Ideas Helping Turns Source Needed Function Human Mind Stable Theoretical Way Of Thinking Harmonious Fertile Orderly

Book:Wholeness and the Implicate Order

Source: Wholeness and the Implicate Order

“To think, analyze and invent, he [Pierre Menard] also wrote me, “are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence. To glorify the occasional fulfillment of this function, to treasure ancient thoughts of others, to remember with incredulous amazement that the doctor universal is thought, is to confess our languor or barbarism. Every man should be capable of all ideas, and I believe that in the future he will be." (Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote, 1939)”

“Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”

Source: Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition

“The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve.”

May Ideas Function Who I Am Obsolete Pray Love Eat Pray Love Book Eat Love Pray

Book:Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything

Source: Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything

“We cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don't matter at all.”

World Writing Ideas Matter Individual Grows Simple Growing Up Function Merit Outliers

Book:Outliers: The Story of Success

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

“I have no idea how people function without near-constant internal chaos. I'd lose my mind.”

People Mind Ideas Loses Function Constant Chaos No Idea Internals

Book:A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a True Story

Source: A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a True Story

“A function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it invites a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it passes for acceptance of an idea.”

“The adoption of the required attitude of mind towards ideas that seem to emerge "of their own free will" and the abandonment of the critical function that is normally in operation against them seem to be hard of achievement for some people. The "involuntary thoughts" are liable to release a most violent resistance, which seeks to prevent their emergence. If we may trust that great poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, however, poetic creation must demand an exactly similar attitude.”

Source: The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud

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