“Our culture is teleological-it presumes purposive development and a conclusion.”
Source: Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends (1989), Chapter 6, Japan, China and the Making of nations, p. 164.
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William Pfaff 18
American journalist 1928–2015Related quotes

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)
Context: I am interested in a phase that I think we are entering. I call it "teleological evolution," evolution with a purpose. The idea of evolution by design, designing the future, anticipating the future. I think of the need for more wisdom in the world, to deal with the knowledge that we have. At one time we had wisdom, but little knowledge. Now we have a great deal of knowledge, but do we have enough wisdom to deal with that knowledge?

Words to Intellectuals (1961)

“[W]hy presumes purpose... But what if there isn't purpose? Whenever we say why we really mean how.”
"Lawrence Krauss: A Universe from Nothing" (2031)
Source: 11:05 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46sKeycH3bE&t=665s

On the Defection of Eldridge Cleaver from the Black Panther Party and the Defection of the Black Panther Party from the Black Community
To Die For The People

Work report at the Communist Party of China Congress (8 November 2002), as quoted in Selected Works of Jiang Zemin, Eng. ed., FLP, Beijing, 2013, Vol. III, p. 519.
2000s
"Teleoplexy: Notes on Acceleration" (2014), in #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, p. 513
1988

Speech at the Nobel Banquet (1991)
Context: What we had to do to find the world was to enter our own world fully, first. We had to enter through the tragedy of our own particular place. If the Nobel awards have a special meaning, it is that they carry this concept further. In their global eclecticism they recognize that no single society, no country or continent can presume to create a truly human culture for the world. To be among laureates, past and present, is at least to belong to some sort of one world.