DNA Lounge blog http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2004/04.html#18
“It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.”
“The purpose of human life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others.”
Variant: The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.
“It serves the purpose of not serving a purpose, surely quite a valid one.”
In an interview in Artforum, Nov. 83
Interviews
Source: (1776), Book IV, Chapter I, p. 471.
“If I can't serve as a role model, let me serve as a warning.”
English and Welsh (1955)
1950s, Farewell address to Congress (1951)
Context: I address you with neither rancor nor bitterness in the fading twilight of life, with but one purpose in mind: to serve my country. The issues are global and so interlocked that to consider the problems of one sector, oblivious to those of another, is but to court disaster for the whole. While Asia is commonly referred to as the Gateway to Europe, it is no less true that Europe is the Gateway to Asia, and the broad influence of the one cannot fail to have its impact upon the other.
Podcast Series 1 Episode 2
On Sex
“I do have this one purpose — increasing the intensity of my consciousness of life.”
As quoted in the "Homi Jehangir Bhabha" profile at the Vigyan Prasar Science Portal http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/scientists/bhabha/BHABHANEW.HTM
Context: I know quite clearly what I want out of my life. Life and my emotions are the only things I am conscious of. I love the consciousness of life and I want as much of it as I can get. But the span of one's life is limited. What comes after death no one knows. Nor do I care. Since, therefore, I cannot increase the content of life by increasing its duration, I will increase it by increasing its intensity. Art, music, poetry and everything else … I do have this one purpose — increasing the intensity of my consciousness of life.
