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Function Quotes

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Function Quotes

“Inevitably, people tell me that poor folks are lazy or unintelligent, that they are somehow deserving of their poverty. However, if you begin to look at the sociological literature on poverty, a more complex picture emerges. Poverty and unemployment are part and parcel of our economic order. Without them, capitalism would cease to function effectively, and in order to continue to function, the system itself must produce poverty and an army of underemployed or unemployed people.”

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Author:Bob Torres
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“There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is--to teach; the function of the second is--to move, the first is a rudder, the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy.”

FirstsMayReasonHappensMovingLiteratureSpeakUnderstandingPleasureTeachHigherFunctionMereAffectionSailOarRudders
Book:Leaders in literature
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“During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance ... has seeped down into the lowest publications. ... Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature's spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests.”

LittlesEyeLastsSpiritualUsedGirlLiteratureResultsRichCenturyAuthorityFunctionGuidancePriestsVillageQuartersPossessedCreamLowestNo PointContinuityPublicationAdvertisementsBreachUsurpationSpiritual GuidanceQuarter Of A Century
Author:Simone Weil
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“I see no reason in morality, why literature should not have as one of its intentions the arousing of thoughts of lust. It is one of the effects, perhaps one of the functions of literature to arouse desire, and I can discover no grounds for saying that sexual pleasure should not be among the objects of desire which literature presents to us, along with heroism, virtue, peace, death, food, wisdom, God, etc.”

ShouldI CanReasonDesireLiteraturePleasureVirtueEffectsObjectsMoralityFunctionIntentionLustEtcNo ReasonHeroismObjects Of Desire
Author:Lionel
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“Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay is a stylistically daring writer in love with surrealism, credited with being 'the woman who reintroduced hardcore sexuality to Bengali literature'. But though the (male) establishment used this label of erotica to dismiss her work, the sex scenes have exactly the same transgressive function as her use of chronology and narrative voice.”

UseUsedLiteratureSexVoiceSceneFunctionMalesSexualityLabelsNarrativeEstablishmentDaringSurrealismHardcoreBengaliChronologyNarrative Voice
Author:Deborah Smith
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“The very function of creativity, of the elaboration of the human condition only enlarges the human spirit and, I mean, as a writer I don't want to read political literature all the time. It would be terribly boring and, you know, abrasive, but just reading the insights, you know, partaking of the insights of a writer into phenomena, into society, into human relationships, both on a micro level and on a macro level, is already a function.”

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Author:Wole Soyinka
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“Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair. Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species. --speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1962”

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Book:A Life in Letters
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“The sole function of education...[is] to open the way to thinking and knowing, and the school, as the outstanding organ for the people's education, must serve that end exclusively.”

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Book:Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words
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“Childhood is a complex dialectical process characterized by periodicity, unevenness in the development of different functions, metamorphosis or qualitative transformation of one form into another, intertwining of external and internal factors, and adaptive processes which overcome impediments that the child encounters.”

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Author:Lev S. Vygotsky
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“Scientific practice is above all a story-telling practice. ... Biology is inherently historical, and its form of discourse is inherently narrative. ... Biology as a way of knowing the world is kin to Romantic literature, with its discourse about organic form and function. Biology is the fiction appropriate to objects called organisms; biology fashions the facts "discovered" about organic beings.”

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Author:Donna J. Haraway
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“One function of the librarian, as he saw it, was to blunt the edge of these differences and to provide a means whereby the rich and poor could live happily side by side. The public library was a great leveler, supplying a literature by which the ordinary man could experience some of the pleasures of the rich, and providing a common ground where employer and employee could meet on equal terms.”

MenMeanLiteratureSidesTermDifferencesPleasurePoorCommonDemocracyRichSawsEqualOrdinaryFunctionLibraryEdgesEmployeeProvidingEmployersLibrarianRich And PoorBluntCommon GroundOrdinary ManPublic Library
Author:Lewis Henry Steiner
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“In an age when other fantastically speedy, widespread media are triumphing, and running the risk of flattening all communication onto a single, homogenous surface, the function of literature is communication between things that are different simply because they are different, not blunting but even sharpening the differences between them, following the true bent of written language.”

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Author:Italo Calvino
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