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Purpose Quotes

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Purpose Quotes

“We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves and in our being; we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others, and for this purpose we endeavor to shine. We labor unceasingly to adorn and preserve this imaginary existence and neglect the real.”

MindRealDesirePurposeExistenceLaborShiningVanityPreservesHypocrisyNeglectEndeavorImaginaryDesire To LiveImaginary Life
Book:Thoughts, Letters, and Minor Works
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“With a full century of contrary proof in our possession and despite our demonstrated capacity for cooperative teamwork, some among us seem to accept the shibboleth of an unbridgeable gap between those who hire and those who are employed. We miserably fail to challenge the lie that what is good for management is necessarily bad for labor; that for one side to profit, the other must be depressed. Such distorted doctrine is false and foreign to the American scene where common ideals and purpose permit us a common approach toward the common good.”

SeemsLyingPurposeSidesChallengesCommonAcceptingFailingCenturySceneApproachCapacityIdealsLaborManagementProfitPossessionProofContraryDoctrineDespiteGapsTeamworkPermitEmployedEmployersCommon GoodCooperatives
Author:Dwight D. Eisenhower
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“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others,thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”

IfsMayWholePurposeCultureThreeAsksBeliefLinesMoralShapesElementsStringsSolitaryConfiguration
Book:The Culture We Deserve
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“Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom, that the wisest of us all, should thus outwit ourselves, and eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of pursuing them.”

ShouldHumansPurposePrideAmbitionExcessWisestScourgeHuman Wisdom
Book:The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. And A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy ... With Life of the Author by Sir Walter Scott, Portrait, and Outline Wood Engravings After Thomas Stothard
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“The difference between prose logic and poetic thought is simple. The logician uses words as a builder uses bricks, for the unemotional deadness of his academic prose; and is always coining newer, deader words with a natural preference for Greek formations. The poet avoids the entire vocabulary of logic unless for satiric purposes, and treats words as living creatures with a preference for those with long emotional histories dating from mediaeval times. Poetry at its purest is, indeed, a defiance of logic.”

LongUsePoetryPurposeNaturalDifferencesSimpleEmotionalPoetCreaturesLogicTreatsDatingGreekProsePoeticAcademicVocabularyPreferenceBricksFormationDefianceBuilderLiving CreaturesUnemotionalTime Poetry
Book:Some speculations on literature, history, and religion
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“If we are to become the masters of science, not its slaves, we must learn to use its immense power to good purpose. The machine itself has neither mind nor soul nor moral sense. Only man has been endowed with these godlike attributes. Every age has its destined duty. Ours is to nurture an awareness of those divine attributes and a sense of responsibility in giving them expression.”

IfsMenGivingMindHas BeensSoulUseAgeSciencePurposeResponsibilityMoralAwarenessDivineExpressionMastersDutyMachinesSlaveAttributesImmenseNurtureDestinedSense Of ResponsibilityGodlike
Author:David Sarnoff
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“The purpose of adolescence is to revise the past, not to obliterate it. . . . Adolescence entails the deployment of family passions to the passions and ideals that bind individuals to new family units, to their communities, to the species, to nature, to the cosmos. Therefore, given half a chance, the revolution at issue in adolescence becomes a revolution of transformation, not of annihilation.”

PastPurposePassionIndividualGivenCommunityChanceHalfIssuesRevolutionIdealsTransformationSpeciesCosmosAdolescenceUnitsAnnihilationDeploymentFamily UnitNew Family
Author:Louise J. Kaplan
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“People run away from the name subsidy. It is a subsidy. I am not afraid to call it so. It is paid for the purpose of giving a merchant marine to the whole country so that the trade of the whole country will be benefitted thereby, and the men running the ships will of course make a reasonable profit.... Unless we have a merchant marine, our navy if called upon for offensive or defensive work is going to be most defective.”

PeopleIfsMenGivingCountryWholeRunningPurposeCoursesNamesHe ManPaidTradeProfitShipsReasonableRunning AwayNot AfraidOffensiveNavyMarineMerchantsSubsidiesDefectiveMerchant Marine
Author:William Howard Taft
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“Many people believe letters the most personal and revealing form of communication. In them, we expect to find the charmer at his nap, slumped, open-mouthed, profoundly himself without thought for appearances. Yet, this is not quite true. Letters are above all useful as a means of expressing the ideal self; and no other method of communication is quite so good for this purpose. In conversation, those uneasy eyes upon you, those lips ready with an emendation before you have begun to speak, are a powerful deterrent to unreality, even to hope.”

PeopleBelieveMeanSelfEyeFormPurposeSpeakPowerfulReadyCommunicationConversationSpeechIdealsLettersMethodLipsAppearanceRevealingNapsUneasyUnrealityDeterrentCharmers
Book:The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick
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“If God bestowed immortality on every man then when he made him, and he made many to whom he never purposed to give his saving grace, what did his Lordship think that God gave any man immortality with purpose only to make him capable of immortal torments? It is a hard saying, and I think cannot piously be believed. I am sure it can never be proved by the canonical Scripture.”

IfsThinkingMenGivingMadeHardPurposeHellGraceCapableMercyEvery ManScriptureSavingImmortalityImmortalTormentLordshipSaving Grace
Book:The Moral and Political Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury: Never Before Collected Together : To which is Prefixed, the Author's Life, Extracted from that Said to be Written by Himself, ...
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“Justice is a moral virtue, merely because it has that tendency to the good of mankind, and indeed is nothing but an artificial invention to that purpose. The same may be said of allegiance, of the laws of nations, of modesty, and of good manners. All these are mere human contrivances for the interest of society.”

HumansMaySaidLawPurposeNationsInterestJusticeMoralVirtueSocietyMankindMereInventionTendenciesMannersGood ManArtificialModestyAllegianceGood MannersMoral Virtues
Book:A Treatise of Human Nature
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“The Red Cross in its nature, it aims and purposes, and consequently, its methods, is unlike any other organization in the country.It is an organization of physical action, of instantaneous action, at the spur of the moment; it cannot await the ordinary deliberation of organized bodies if it would be of use to suffering humanity,[ellipsis in original] it has by its nature a field of its own.”

IfsCountryMomentsUseBodyWould BeActionPurposeSufferingHumanityFieldsOrdinaryRedCrossesOrganizationOriginalsAimMethodOrganizedSpursDeliberationInstantaneousRed CrossSpur Of The Moment
Author:Clara Barton
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“In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despitethe fact that the American Revolution was successful--realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime--while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.”

ChildrenFactsSeemsPoliticalPurposeRealizingSuccessfulEventsRevolutionRevolutionaryDullComparisonRegimesMonarchyRestorationDespotismAmerican RevolutionFrench RevolutionDevouring
Author:Irving Kristol
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“Whoever considers morality the main objective of human existence, seems to me like a person who defines the purpose of a clock asnot going wrong. The first objective for a clock, is, however, that it does run; not going wrong is an additional regulative function. If not a watch's greatest accomplishment were not going wrong, unwound watches might be the best.”

IfsFirstsHumansPersonsDoeSeemsMightRunningPurposeExistenceWatchesMoralityFunctionPrioritiesObjectivesClockAccomplishmentBeing The BestHuman ExistenceGreatest Accomplishment
Author:Franz Grillparzer
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“One can't imagine a Hollywood film whose entire purpose was to ridicule, say, homosexual activists, feminists, animal rights crusaders, or environmentalists. That would be blasphemy. Hollywood understands that religious people, particularly Christians, are the last group in America besides businessmen who may be defamed with impunity.”

PeopleMayWould BeChristianLastsAmericaFilmPurposeReligiousAnimalRightsImagineGroupsHollywoodFeministActivistAnimal RightsBusinessmanHomosexualRidiculeBlasphemyEnvironmentalistImpunityHollywood Films
Book:The Seductive Image: Cinema and the Christian Faith
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“When Western people train the mind, the focus is generally on the left hemisphere of the cortex, which is the portion of the brainthat is concerned with words and numbers. We enhance the logical, bounded, linear functions of the mind. In the East, exercises of this sort are for the purpose of getting in tune with the unconscious--to get rid of boundaries, not to create them.”

PeopleMindPurposeLeftNumbersFocusExerciseConcernedFunctionTrainWesternEastBoundariesUnconsciousTunesLogicalPortionsLinearHemisphere
Author:Edward T. Hall
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“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.”

PeopleUseHomeUsedPurposeFoundObjectsOfficeWeaponsConcernFunctionVarietyCarrieBedroomOffensiveAutomobileTransportContentiousHome OfficeJetty
Book:To Think: In Language, Learning and Education
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“For centuries, dreams have been used to communicate instruction and direction to people of purpose - great men and women. God used dreams to prepare Joseph for his future as a leader of nations. He gave battle plans to Gideon in a dream. Joan of Arc, Jacob, George Washington, Marie Curie, and the apostle Paul were all guided by their dreams.”

PeopleMenHas BeensDreamMotivationalUsedPurposeNationsLeaderPlansCenturyGreatnessBattleMen And WomenCommunicatePreparationGreat MenInstructionApostlesArcsJacobMarieGideonApostle Paul
Book:Traveler's Gift; Mastering the Seven Decisions
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“In the summer after kindergarten, a friend introduced me to the joys of building plastic model airplanes and warships. By the fourth grade, I graduated to an erector set and spent many happy hours constructing devices of unknown purpose where the main design criterion was to maximize the number of moving parts and overall size. The living room rug was frequently littered with hundreds of metal “girders” and tiny nuts and bolts surrounding half-finished structures. An understanding mother allowed me to keep the projects going for days on end.”

EndsMovingJoyMotherPurposeUnderstandingHoursRoomsNumbersHalfDesignBuildingProjectsSummerModelsStructureSizeFinishedTinyGradesDevicesNutsMetalsAirplaneFourthPlasticCriteriaLiving RoomBoltsKindergartenFourth GradeNuts And BoltsMoving PartsHappy HourWarships
Author:Steven Chu
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“A lot of arguments happen among religious and non religious people about the question of who's going to hell and who's going to heaven and uh, a lot of times Christians get into this argument by saying 'we have the only way to heaven.' And uh, people often ask me what do I think is the way to heaven. I have a problem when they ask me this question because it assumes that the primary purpose of Jesus' coming and the primary message of Jesus was a message about how to get to heaven.”

PeopleThinkingWayProblemHappensChristianPurposeAsksJesusHeavenReligiousHellMessagesArgumentAssumingPrimariesAsk MeGoing To HeavenNon Religious
Author:Brian D. McLaren
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