Variant: "I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." also mentioned as Jack London quote in Ian Fleming book You Only Live Twice (1964), Ch. 21 : Orbit
Source: San Francisco Bulletin in 1916. Also included as an introduction to a compilation of Jack London short stories in 1956.
“The function of man is to live, not to exist.”
Variant: The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.
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Jack London 77
American author, journalist, and social activist 1876–1916Related quotes
“A man who prays lives out the mystery of existence, and a man who does not pray scarcely exists.”
Love is a Radiant Light: The Life & Words of Saint Charbel (2019)
“The Law continues to exist and to function. But it no longer exists for me.”
Source: Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (1535), Chapter 2, Verse 19
Kotaro Suzumura, An interview with Paul Samuelson: welfare economics,“old” and “new”, and social choice theory (2005)
New millennium
General Survey
The Function of the Orgasm (1927)
“The existing paradigm about the brain has ceased to function adequately.”
The Fabric of Mind (1985)
Adam Schaff (1947), cited in: Susan Petrilli and Augusto Ponzio (2007) "Adam Schaff: from Semantics to Political Semiotics." 9th World Congress of IASS/AIS. 2007.
Source: The Functions of the Executive (1938), p. 87
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Context: Amid the vastness of the things among which we live, the existence of nothingness holds the first place; its function extends over all things that have no existence, and its essence, as regards time, lies precisely between the past and the future, and has nothing in the present. This nothingness has the part equal to the whole, and the whole to the part, the divisible to the indivisible; and the product of the sum is the same whether we divide or multiply, and in addition as in subtraction; as is proved by arithmeticians by their tenth figure which represents zero; and its power has not extension among the things of Nature.
Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 145.