Home / Topics / Function Quotes

Function Quotes

Browse 2701 quotes about Function.

Function Quotes

“Regular crises perpetuate the past by reinvigorating cycles which started long ago. In contrast, (capital-C) Crises are the past's death knell. They function like laboratories in which the future is incubated. They have given us agriculture and the industrial revolution, technology and the labour contract, killer germs and antibiotics. Once they strike, the past ceases to be a reliable predictor of the future and a brave new world is born.”

Source: The Global Minotaur: America, Europe and the Future of the Global Economy

“Reason's biological function is to preserve and promote life and to postpone its extinction as long as possible. Thinking and acting are not contrary to nature; they are, rather, the foremost features of man's nature. The most appropriate description of man as differentiated from nonhuman beings is: a being purposively struggling against the forces adverse to his life.”

Thinking Men Long Reason Force Acting Struggle Function Contrary Preserves Features Appropriate Description Extinction Adverse

Book:Human action: a treatise on economics

Source: Human action: a treatise on economics

“The labour-power is a commodity , not capital, in the hands of the labourer, and it constitutes for him a revenue so long as he can continuously repeat its sale; it functions as capital after its sale, in the hands of the capitalist, during the process of production itself.”

Long Hands Process Function Productions Repeats Labour Capitalist Commodity Revenue Labourers

Book:Capital

Source: Capital

“Money is indispensable to a long-circuit heavy load energy system. It must be used when a sufficient surplus is being produced to allow a margin for exchange, and cost of transport, over a considerable distance. Money represents a storage battery when idle, and a generalized mode of the conversion of energy when it is in motion, with a function of equating time and space.”

Long Used Energy Space Cost Function Distance Heavy Conversion Sufficient Load Idle Indispensable Time And Space Margins Transport Circuits Batteries Surplus Storage Heavy Loads

Book:God of the Machine

Source: God of the Machine

“So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation.”

Long War Might Realizing Situation Moral Failing Function Heat Substitutes Propose

Book:William James: Essays and Lectures

Source: William James: Essays and Lectures

“Organized business has assumed that greater profits would be pretty much of a cure-all, and it has to a major extent ignored the fact that the welfare of business rests upon the welfare of the consumers of a nation; that business or free enterprise will function in a democracy only so long as the democracy functions.”

Long Facts Would Be Nations Democracy Greater Majors Function Profit Cures Consumers Welfare Organized Enterprise Ignored Free Enterprise

Author:Saul Alinsky

“In the long run, though, the greatest IT risk facing most companies is more prosaic than a catastrophe. It is, simply, overspending. IT may be a commodity, and its costs may fall rapidly enough to ensure that any new capabilities are quickly shared, but the very fact that it is entwined with so many business functions means that it will continue to consume a large portion of corporate spending.”

May Mean Long Enough Facts Running Fall Company Risk Cost Function Spending Corporate Capability Portions Long Runs Commodity Catastrophe Entwined Overspending

Author:Nicholas G. Carr

“Unlike Hegel's progress model of history, which moves by stages, each containing its own logic of growth and decline, the economic model develops as the simple function of one money-variable over time, with a long-term trend which increases monotonically.”

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace: The Anarcho-Psychological Critique: Stirner, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky

“Capitalism had arisen through the misuse and exaggeration of certain rights, notably the right of property - the basis of economic freedom - and the right of contract, which is one of the main functions of economic freedom. Therefore, even under Capitalism, so long as the old principles were remembered it was possible to recall the principles whereby Society had once been sane and well ordered.”

Wells Long Certain Politics Principles Economy Rights Economic Capitalism Function Bases Property Remembered Liberalism Contracts Sane Recalls Exaggeration Misuse Economic Freedom

Author:Hilaire Belloc

“Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable.”

“So long as society is founded on injustice, the function of the laws will be to defend injustice. And the more unjust they are the more respectable they will seem.”

Long Seems Law Function Injustice Unjust Respectable

Author:Anatole France

“If anybody wants to engage in any kind of sexual activity with any consenting partner, that is their business. Anybody can do anything they damn well please, as long as the relationship isn't exploitive. And I don't feel that legality should have anything to do with it. There are certain bodily functions of mine which I will not allow to be supervised.”

Ifs Want Feels Should Wells Kind Long Certain Can Do Mines Please Activity Should Have Function Sexuality Partners Damn Legality Bodily Functions

Author:Madalyn Murray O'Hair

“Studies by Andrew Newberg and others have shown that long-term practice of meditation produces significant alterations in cerebral blood flow in parts of the brain related to attention, emotion, and some autonomic functions.”

Long Term Emotion Attention Brain Practice Study Meditation Blood Produce Flow Function Significant Long Term Related Andrew Cerebral Alterations Blood Flow

Book:Hallucinations

Source: Hallucinations

“To confine soldiers to purely military functions while urgent and vital tasks have to be done, and nobody else is available to undertake them, would be senseless. The soldier must then be prepared to become a propagandist, a social worker, a civil engineer, a schoolteacher, a nurse, a boy scout. But only for as long as he cannot be replaced, for it is better to entrust civilian tasks to civilians.”

“Jail sentences have many functions, but one is surely to send a message about what our society abhors and what it values. This week, the equation was twofold: female infidelity twice as bad as male abuse, the life of a woman half as valuable as that of a man. The killing of the woman taken in adultery has a long history and survives today in many cultures. One of those is our own.”

Men Long Today Law Values Culture Half Taken Week Messages Female Abuse Function Males Killing Injustice Valuable Sentences Our Society Jail Misogyny Infidelity Equations Adultery

Author:Anna Quindlen

“Despite the long-term reduction in familial roles and functions, we believe that parents are still the world's greatest experts about the needs of their own children. Virtually any private or public program that supports parents, effectively supports children. This principle of supporting family vitality seems to us preferable to any policy that would have the state provide children directly with what it thinks they need.”

Source: All Our Children: The American Family Under Pressure

“While the Internet generally tends to have a stress-relieving function for adults - as long as they aren't inclined toward sex addiction - I don't see this being the case for adolescents.”

Long Sex Cases Internet Adults Function Stress Addiction Sex Addiction Stress Relieving

Author:Volkmar Sigusch

“A lot of dudes can't function too long in mainstream life because they've been indoctrinated into that penal system where that shapes their life.”

Long Shapes Function Mainstream

Author:Sadat X

“Long-term investment success is almost totally a function of how one emotionally handles declines in the equity market, as opposed to how one's portfolio handles them.”

Long Term Function Investment Handle Long Term Decline Equity Portfolios Investment Success

Author:Nick Murray

“Presently we have to train our unconscious to function better. Then we can depend upon our instincts, that will be noble instincts. At this moment, our instincts are very impure. When we have practiced for a long time, living the higher values of life and following the instructions of great masters or the Scriptures, that is when you have trained your unconscious. Then when a situation comes, you can to an extent, depend on your inner voice.”

Long Moments Values Voice Situation Masters Depends Higher Long Time Function Train Instinct Following Noble Scripture Unconscious Instruction Inner Voice Value Of Life

Author:Chinmayananda Saraswati

“It's a flaw in our argument, for sure. By any reading of evolutionary theory, creationists ought to have died out ages ago. They serve no function in the planet's ecosystem, and no other species has survived so long while in such fundamental disagreement with observable reality. If I wasn't such an ardent believer in secular materialism, I'd wager this is really troubling Darwin in the afterlife.”

Ifs Long Reality Age Reading Planets Theory Ought Argument Function Died Fundamentals Species Believer Materialism Flaws Afterlife Secular Survived Disagreement Ecosystems Ardent Wagers

Author:Richard Dawkins

“As long as somebody is guaranteed a certain number of sales you know you're gonna keep seeing these vanity projects. I mean they have a place, they serve a function they can bring people into comics.”

People Knows Mean Long Certain Numbers Seeing Projects Function Vanity

Author:Gerard Way

“What does the frontal cortex do? Gratification postponement, executive function, long-term planning, and impulse control. Basically, it makes you do the harder thing.”

Long Doe Term Function Harder Planning Impulse Long Term Executives Gratification Postponement Impulse Control

Author:Robert M. Sapolsky

“What is also true is that partly because my docket was really full here, so I couldn't be both chief organizer of the Democratic Party and function as Commander-in-Chief and President of the United States. We did not begin what I think needs to happen over the long haul, and that is rebuild the Democratic Party at the ground level.”

Thinking Needs Long States Happens President Levels United Party United States Function Democratic Chiefs Democratic Party Commanders Commander In Chief Haul Organizer Long Haul

Author:Barack Obama

“Last night I encountered a dream cat with a very long neck and a body like a human fetus, gray and transluscent. I don't know what it needs or how to provide for it. Another dream years ago of a human child with eyes on stalks. It is very small, but can walk and talk "Don't you want me?" Again, I don't know how to care for the child. But I am dedicated to protecting and nurturing him at any cost! It is the function of the Guardian to protect hybrids and mutants in the vulnerable stage of infancy.”

“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.”

Source: Animal Farm and 1984

“Everything in this business makes sense, because it serves a real purpose, fills a need that's a part of living. Even a single nail, like this one, fulfills a function. Drive it into a crucial place and you can depend on it to do a job, keep on doing it for a hundred years to come. Long after we're dead and gone, both of us.”

Needs Years Long Real Jobs Purpose Gone Depends Hundred Function Make Sense Crucial Nails

Book:Psycho: A Novel

Source: Psycho: A Novel

“The degree to which a surviving parent copes is the most important indicator of the child's long-term adaptation. Kids whose surviving parents are unable to function effectively in the parenting role show more anxiety and depression, as well as sleep and health problems, than those whose parents have a strong support network and solid inner resources to rely on.”

Source: Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss, 20th Anniversary Edition

“These problems have been here so long that the only way I’ve been able to function at all is by learning to ignore them. Else I would be in a constant state of panic, unable to think or act constructively.”

Thinking Way Long Has Beens States Problem Would Be Able Function Constant Panic

Book:Worm: The First Digital World War

Source: Worm: The First Digital World War

“Can one think that because we are engineers, beauty does not preoccupy us or that we do not try to build beautiful, as well as solid and long lasting structures? Aren't the genuine functions of strength always in keeping with unwritten conditions of harmony? ... Besides, there is an attraction, a special charm in the colossal to which ordinary theories of art do not apply.”

“No physiologist who calmly considers the question in connection with the general truths of his science, can long resist the conviction that different parts of the cerebrum subserve different kinds of mental action. Localization of function is the law of all organization whatever: separateness of duty is universally accompanied with separateness of structure: and it would be marvellous were an exception to exist in the cerebral hemispheres.”

“So long as man is protected by madness - he functions - and flourishes.”

Men Long Function Madness Protected

Book:A short history of decay

Source: A short history of decay

“Biologists have long attempted by chemical means to induce in higher organisms predictable and specific changes which thereafter could be transmitted in series as hereditary characters. Among microorganisms the most striking example of inheritable and specific alterations in cell structure and function that can be experimentally induced and are reproducible under well defined and adequately controlled conditions is the transformation of specific types of Pneumococcus.”

“I have been long sensible that while I was endeavoring to render our country the greatest of all services, that of regenerating the public education, and placing our rising generation on the level of our sister states (which they have proudly held heretofore), I was discharging the odious function of a physician pouring medicine down the throat of a patient insensible of needing it.”

Long Has Beens Country States Levels Education Generations Function Medicine Patient Our Country Rising Throat Sensible Physicians Pouring Public Education Insensible

Book:Early History of the University of Virginia: As Contained in the Letters of Thomas Jefferson and Joseph C. Cabell, Hitherto Unpublished; with an Appendix, Consisting of Mr. Jefferson's Bill for a Complete System of Education and Other Illustrative Documents; and an Introduction, Comprising a Brief Historical Sketch of the University, and a Biographical Notice of Joseph C. Cabell

Source: Early History of the University of Virginia: As Contained in the Letters of Thomas Jefferson and Joseph C. Cabell, Hitherto Unpublished; with an Appendix, Consisting of Mr. Jefferson's Bill for a Complete System of Education and Other Illustrative Documents; and an Introduction, Comprising a Brief Historical Sketch of the University, and a Biographical Notice of Joseph C. Cabell

“The brain is not, like the liver, heart and other internal organs, capable from the moment of birth of all the functions which it ever discharges; for while in common with them, it has certain duties for the exercise of which it is especially intended, its high character in man, as the organ of conscious life, the supreme instrument of his relations with the rest of nature, is developed only by a long and patient training.”

Men Heart Long Moments Character Certain Common Brain Duty Birth Exercise Capable Training Conscious Function Relation Instruments Patient Supreme Internals Organs Liver Discharge

Author:Ray V. Pierce

“The lie has long since lost its honest function of misrepresenting reality. Nobody believes anybody, everyone is in the know. Lies are told only to convey to someone that one has no need either of him or his good opinion.”

Knows Needs Believe Long Reality Lying Lost Opinion Honest Function

Book:Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life

Source: Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life

“Mark the babe not long accustomed to this breathing world; One that hath barely learned to shape a smile, though yet irrational of soul, to grasp with tiny finger - to let fall a tear; And, as the heavy cloud of sleep dissolves, To stretch his limbs, becoming, as might seem. The outward functions of intelligent man.”

Source: The Poems of William Wordsworth

“All of man's ills are due to his lack of knowing God within him. The perfection of God's universe is founded upon its perfection of Balance. All of man's ills are caused by toxic poisons generated in his body through unbalance affecting his power of control over the functions of his electric body. Man, as an extension of God, is creator of his own electric body. He is master of his electric body to the extent of his knowing the Light of God in him. ... God says to man: »What I do, ye shall do«, but man is unbelieving for long ages.”

Men Long Body Light Age Universe Knowing Masters Balance Perfection Function Creator Dues Poison Toxic Electric Extensions Knowing God

Author:Walter Russell

“It win be a device that will permit communication without any time interval between two points in space. The device will not transmit messages, of course; simultaneity is identity. But to our perceptions, that simultaneity will function as a transmission, a sending. So we will be able to use it to talk between worlds, without the long waiting for the message to go and the reply to return that electromagnetic impulses require. It is really a very simple matter. Like a kind of telephone.”

“Being healthy is a complete lifestyle for me. It allows my brain to function at a very high degree so I can comprehend all the new things that are thrown at me. It also allows me to sleep well so that I am rested when I need to perform. Finally, being healthy will hopefully allow me to live a long and fun-filled life.”

Needs Wells Long I Can Fun Sleep Brain Healthy Degrees Function Filled Lifestyle Hopefully Thrown New Things Sleep Well

Author:Derrick Rose

“It is said that it is far more difficult to hold and maintain leadership (liberty) than it is to attain it. Success is a ruthless competitor for it flatters and nourishes our weaknesses and lulls us into complacency. We bask in the sunshine of accomplishment and lose the spirit of humility which helps us visualize all the factors which have contributed to our success. We are apt to forget that we are only one of a team, that in unity there is strength and that we are strong only as long as each unit in our organization functions with precision.”

“If insemination were the sole biological function of sex, it could be achieved far more economically in a few seconds of mounting and insertion. Indeed, the least social of mammals mate with scarcely more ceremony. The species that have evolved long-term bonds are also, by and large, the ones that rely on elaborate courtship rituals. . . . Love and sex do indeed go together.”

Ifs Love Long Together Social Sex Term Function Species Long Term Rely Ritual Seconds Mates Sole Ceremony Courtship Mammals

Author:E. O. Wilson

“That which is useless dies. Animals that fail to serve some useful purpose in the scheme of things slowly but surely become extinct. Let any part of the human body cease to perform its ordained function, and it withers-as when an arm is kept long in a sling. This same decree, that nothing useless is permitted to survive, runs through the mind of the industrial world.”

World Mind Humans Long Body Running Purpose Dies Animal Failing Failure Arms Survival Function Cease Useless Schemes Human Body Decree Slowly But Surely

Author:B. C. Forbes

“The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long word that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that’s already in the verb, every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what—these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to the education and rank.”

Writing Long Secret Reader Thousand Function Sentences Proportion Carrie Construction Passive Components Verbs Good Writing Unsure Adverbs Short Words Long Words

Author:William Zinsser