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Function Quotes

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Function Quotes

“An object never serves the same function as its image - or its name.”

Names Objects Function

Author:Rene Magritte

“There must be a union between the spirit in wood and the spirit in man. The grain of the wood must relate closely to its function. The abutment of the edge of one board to an adjoining board can mean the success or failure of a piece. () Gradually a form evolves, much as nature produces the tree in the first place. The object created can live forever. The tree lives on in its new form. The object cannot follow a transitory “style”, here for a moment, discarded the next. Its appeal must be universal. Cordial and receptive, it should invite a meeting with man”

“The talker has found a hearer but not a listener; and though he may talk his very best for his own sake, you will find that his mental movements are erratic: they have no fixed centre and no definite object. His talk is like the water of a canal whose banks have given way, which rolls aimlessly hither and thither, without fulfilling any useful function, though it is the same water which was so helpful and serviceable, when it was confined within clearly marked limits by the restraining force of its earthy boundaries.”

Way May Found Given Force Water Movement Objects Listening Limits Function Sake Boundaries Fixed Helpful Listeners Fulfilling Definite Centre Confined Talkers Canals Restraining Erratic

Author:Charles Dickens

“I think our civilization is minimal enough without underlining it. Sculpture as a created object in space should enrich, not reflect, and should be beautiful. Beauty is its function.”

Thinking Should Enough Beautiful Space Objects Civilization Function Sculpture

Author:Barbara Chase-Riboud

“Self-painting is a further development of painting. The pictorial surface has lost its function as sole expressive support. It was led back to its origins, the wall, the object, the living being, the human body. By incorporating my body as expressive support, occurrences arise as a result, the course of which the camera records and the viewer can experience”

Humans Self Body Courses Lost Results Support Records Objects Painting Wall Development Function Cameras Surface Arise Sole Viewers Human Body Expressive Pictorial Incorporating

Author:Gunter Brus

“The poetic function is the set towards the message itself, focus on the message for its own sake which by promoting the palpability of signs, deepens the fundamental dichotomy of signs and objects.”

Art Poetry Focus Objects Messages Function Fundamentals Sake Poetic Promoting Dichotomy

Author:Roman Jakobson

“Think of the tools in a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screwdriver, a rule, a glue-pot, nails and screws.--The function of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects.”

Thinking Language Saws Objects Tools Function Boxes Pot Diverse Nails Screws Hammers Glue Screwdrivers Pliers Tool Boxes

Author:Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The religion of art, like the religion of politics, was born from the ruins of Christianity. Art inherited from the old religion the power of consecrating things and endowing them with a sort of eternity; museums are our temples, and the objects displayed in them are beyond history. Politics--or more precisely, Revolution--co-opted the other function of religion: changing human beings and society. Art was an asceticism, a spiritual heroism; Revolution was the construction of a universal church.”

Humans Art Spiritual Politics Born Church Human Beings Christianity Objects Revolution Universal Eternity Function Ruins Temples Museums Construction Heroism Asceticism

Book:1904-1912

Source: 1904-1912

“Uses are always much broader than functions, and usually far less contentious. The word function carries overtones of purpose andpropriety, of concern with why something was developed rather than with how it has actually been found useful. The function of automobiles is to transport people and objects, but they are used for a variety of other purposes--as homes, offices, bedrooms, henhouses, jetties, breakwaters, even offensive weapons.”

Source: To Think: In Language, Learning and Education

“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.”

Should I Can Reason Desire Literature Pleasure Virtue Effects Objects Morality Function Intention Lust Etc No Reason Heroism Objects Of Desire

Author:Lionel

“. . . the membership relation for sets can often be replaced by the composition operation for functions. This leads to an alternative foundation for Mathematics upon categories -- specifically, on the category of all functions. Now much of Mathematics is dynamic, in that it deals with morphisms of an object into another object of the same kind. Such morphisms (like functions) form categories, and so the approach via categories fits well with the objective of organizing and understanding Mathematics. That, in truth, should be the goal of a proper philosophy of Mathematics.”

“Genitive is a funny word because it means "from," but it also is the gender in European languages for objects: the masculine, feminine, and neuter. So if you have a genitive present, there's room for everybody to fit in. I just did a project in Vienna about rock, paper, scissor; you change the gender and it simply changes the whole thing. Rock is no longer a male. It doesn't function the same way.”

Ifs Way Mean Whole Language Rooms Rocks Objects Fit Paper Projects Function Males Gender Feminine Masculine Vienna

Author:Lawrence Weiner

“We live increasingly in a system in which little direct attention is paid to the object, the function, the program, the task, the need; but immense attention to the role, the procedure, prestige, and profit.”

Needs Littles Attention Roles Objects Program Tasks Direct Function Paid Profit Immense Procedures Prestige

Book:Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society

Source: Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society

“[The artist's aim is] not to instruct the viewer, but to give him information... . The artist would follow his predetermined premise to its conclusion, avoiding subjectivity. Chance, taste, or unconsciously remembered forms would play no part in the outcome. The serial artist does not attempt to produce a beautiful or mysterious object but functions merely as a clerk cataloguing the results of his premise.”

“Eiffel saw his Tower in the form of a serious object, rational, useful; men return it to him in the form of a great baroque dream which quite naturally touches on the borders of the irrational ... architecture is always dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience.”

Men Dream Form Saws Objects Serious Expression Return Function Instruments Architecture Rational Borders Towers Irrational Convenience Utopia Baroque Eiffel

Book:The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies

Source: The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies

“Science is the ultimate pornography, analytic activity whose main aim is to isolate objects or events from their contexts in time and space. This obsession with the specific activity of quantified functions is what science shares with pornography.”

Space Share Events Objects Activity Ultimate Function Aim Obsession Time And Space Pornography Analytics

Author:J. G. Ballard

“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.”

Men Ends Use Faces Decision Consciousness Objects Terrible Solitude Standing Function Things Change Dead Man Standing There Remnants Emblems

Author:Paul Auster

“How promising you are as a Student of the Game is a function of what you can pay attention to without running away. Nets and fences can be mirrors. And between the nets and fences, opponents are also mirrors. This is why the whole thing is scary. This why all opponents are scary and weaker opponents are especially scary. See yourself in your opponents. They will bring you to understand the Game. To accept the fact that the Game is about managed fear. That its object is to send from yourself what you hope will not return.”

Whole Facts Running Games Pay Attention Accepting Objects Students Return Function Mirrors Scary Pay Attention Opponents Running Away Fence

Book:Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

“No occupation is more worthy of an intelligent and enlightened mind, than the study of Nature and natural objects; and whether we labour to investigate the structure and function of the human system, whether we direct our attention to the classification and habits of the animal kingdom, or prosecute our researches in the more pleasing and varied field of vegetable life, we shall constantly find some new object to attract our attention, some fresh beauties to excite our imagination, and some previously undiscovered source of gratification and delight.”

Source: A Practical Treatise on the Cultivation of the Dahlia

“But science is the great instrument of social change, all the greater because its object is not change but knowledge, and its silent appropriation of this dominant function, amid the din of political and religious strife, is the most vital of all the revolutions which have marked the development of modern civilisation.”

“While the primary function of formal Buddhist meditation is to create the possibility of the experience of "being," my work as a therapist has shown me that the demands of intimate life can be just as useful as meditation in moving people toward this capacity. Just as in formal meditation, intimate relationships teach us that the more we relate to each other as objects, the greater our disappointment. The trick, as in meditation, is to use this disappointment to change the way we relate.”

Source: Open to Desire: The Truth About What the Buddha Taught

“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.”

World Way Facts Stories Form Science Literature Fiction Knowledge Practice History Knowing Fashion Objects Accounts Function Historical Narrative Appropriate Biology Organisms Discourse

Author:Donna J. Haraway

“We never really see time. We see only clocks. If you say this object moves, what you really mean is that this object is here when the hand of your clock is here, and so on. We say we measure time with clocks, but we see only the hands of the clocks, not time itself. And the hands of a clock are a physical variable like any other. So in a sense we cheat because what we really observe are physical variables as a function of other physical variables, but we represent that as if everything is evolving in time.”

Ifs Mean Hands Moving Science Time Objects Function Evolve Clock Cheat Really Mean Measurement Variables

Author:Carlo Rovelli

“To create architecture is to put in order. Put what in order? Function and objects.”

Order Design Objects Function Architecture Modern Architecture

Book:Precisions on the present state of architecture and city planning: with an American prologue, a Brazilian corollary followed by The temperature of Paris and The atmosphere of Moscow

Source: Precisions on the present state of architecture and city planning: with an American prologue, a Brazilian corollary followed by The temperature of Paris and The atmosphere of Moscow

“Good design is probably 98% common sense. Above all, an object must function well and efficiently-and getting that part right requires a good deal of time and attention.”

Wells Deals Common Attention Design Objects Function Common Sense Good Design

Author:Terence Conran

“Whoever would not remain in complete ignorance of the resources which cause him to act; whoever would seize, at a single philosophical glance, the nature of man and animals, and their relations to external objects; whoever would establish, on the intellectual and moral functions, a solid doctrine of mental diseases, of the general and governing influence of the brain in the states of health and disease, should know, that it is indispensable, that the study of the organization of the brain should march side by side with that of its functions.”

“That the sole object and only legitimate end of government is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and when the government assumes other functions it is usurpation and oppression.”

Ends Government Liberty Objects Citizens Protect Function Assuming Property Oppression Enjoyment Sole Usurpation

Book:An enemy hath done this

Source: An enemy hath done this