Quotes about goal
page 13

Paramahansa Yogananda photo
Joan Miró photo

“to try also, inasmuch as possible, to go beyond easel painting, which in my opinion has a narrow goal, and to bring myself closer, through painting, to the human masses I have never stopped thinking about.”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

1915 - 1940
Source: 'Je rêve d'un grand atelier', Miro 1938; as quoted in Calder Miró, ed. Elizabeth Hutton Turner / Oliver Wick; Philip Wilson Publishers, London 2004, p. 65

Jonah Goldberg photo
Arnold Toynbee photo

“It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.”

Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) British economic historian

Toynbee, cited in: Arnold Joseph Toynbee, ‎Edward DeLos Myers (1955) A study of history. Vol. 7. p. 388

“Ideal goals are a menace in themselves, as much in more modern philosophers as in Plato.”

Moses I. Finley (1912–1986) American historian

Source: Democracy Ancient And Modern (Second Edition) (1985), Chapter 1, Leaders and Followers, p. 6

William Moulton Marston photo

“When any system has for its goal the advancement of the system over the betterment of its individual members, such a system is embedded in slavery.”

Gerry Spence (1929) American lawyer

Source: Give Me Liberty! (1998), Ch. 7 : The New Slave Master, p. 79

Kurt Lewin photo

“Robinson (1952) pointed out some limits to approaching map symbolization and design from a purely artistic viewpoint, as he suggested was the guiding perspective at the time. Maps, like buildings that are designed primarily for artistic impact, are often not functional… Robinson (1952) argued that treating maps as art can lead to "arbitrary and capricious" decisions. He saw only two alternatives: either standardize everything so that no confusion can result about the meaning of symbols, or study and analyze characteristics of perception as they apply to maps so that symbolization and design decisions can be based on "objective" rules… Robinson's dissertation, then, signaled the beginning of a more objective approach to map symbolization and design based on testing the effectiveness of alternatives, an approach that followed the positivist model of physical science. In his dissertation, Robinson cited several aspects of cartographic method for which he felt more objective guidelines were required (e. g., lettering, color, and map design). He also suggested that this objective look at cartographic methods should begin by considering the limitations of human perception. One goal he proposed was identification of the "least practical differences" in map symbols”

Alan MacEachren (1952) American geographer

e.g., the smallest difference in lettering size that would be noticeable to most readers
Source: How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design (1995), p. 2-3

Nick Bostrom photo
Arnold J. Toynbee photo
Tawakkol Karman photo
George Friedman photo

“Al Qaeda has failed in its goals. The United States has succeeded, not so much in winning the war as in preventing the Islamists from winning, and, from a geopolitical perspective, that is good enough.”

George Friedman (1949) American businessman and political scientist

Source: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009), p. 18

Herbert A. Simon photo
Ilana Mercer photo
James Thomson (B.V.) photo
Robert Delaunay photo
Anu Partanen photo
Zoran Đinđić photo
Louis Kronenberger photo

“Ours must be the first age whose great goal, on a nonmaterial plane, is not fulfilment but adjustment; and perhaps just such a goal has served as maladjustment's weapon.”

Louis Kronenberger (1904–1980) American critic and writer

Source: Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life (1954), p. 65.

Richard Dawkins photo

“Human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.”

Source: The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Chapter 3 “Accumulating Small Change” (p. 50)

Emily Brontë photo
Kurien Kunnumpuram photo

“If the world had a finite reality as its goal, then it has only a limited possibility of growth. But when the world has the Infinite God as its goal, it has endless possibilities of growth and development.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, Kurien, 2011 “Theological Exploration,” Jnanadeepa: Pune Journal of Religious Studies 14/2 (July-Dec 2011)
On God

Marie-Louise von Franz photo
Roberto Clemente photo

“With two men on base I was more concerned with driving in a run than getting No. 2,000. I set a goal of 100 RBIs and 25 home runs at the start of the season. Usually I'm not a home run hitter but I've been swinging more for home runs this season then ever before.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

Speaking with reporters after simultaneously reaching several milestones with one swing of the batː 2,000 career hits, 23 home runs (matching his previous high in 1961), and, for the first time in his career, 100 RBIs or more for a season; as quoted in "Clemente's 2,000th Puts Bucs On Top" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=kbIiAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ZbMFAAAAIBAJ&dq=men-base-concerned-driving-run-getting-no&pg=755%2C515794 by Jeff Meyers (UPI), in The Beaver County Times (Saturday, September 3, 1966), p. C-1
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1966</big>

Steve McManaman photo
Bill Nye photo

“Change the world - even if ever so slightly - is my goal.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, Nye: We must all save the Earth, The Madison Courier, Madison, Indiana, February 21, 2009, Pat Whitney]

Sarada Devi photo

“Is faith so cheap, my child? Faith is the last word. If one has faith, the goal is practically reached.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[The Temple Dedication Souvenir]

Theodore Kaczynski photo

“The ultimate goal of a revolutionary movement today must be the total collapse of the worldwide technological system.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

Source: Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (2016), p. 138

Rick Perry photo
Swami Vivekananda photo
Thich Nhat Tu photo
Jordan Peterson photo
Tyra Banks photo

“I was embarrassed when a businessman friend asked, 'What's the yearly budget of your talk show? What's the per-episode budget?' And I looked at him with these blank, typical-model eyes and said, 'I don't know.' I call myself a businesswoman and I don't know that? So that is my goal next year--to really dissect the budget.”

Tyra Banks (1973) American model, author and television personality

Kiri Blakeley (July 3, 2006) "Celebrity 100: Tyra Banks On It" http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2006/0703/120.html, Forbes, Forbes.com LLC.

Hermann Hesse photo

“For a long time one school of players favored the technique of stating side by side, developing in counterpoint, and finally harmoniously combining two hostile themes or ideas, such as law and freedom, individual and community. In such a Game the goal was to develop both themes or theses with complete equality and impartiality, to evolve out of thesis and antithesis the purest possible synthesis. In general, aside from certain brilliant exceptions, Games with discordant, negative, or skeptical conclusions were unpopular and at times actually forbidden. This followed directly from the meaning the Game had acquired at its height for the players. It represented an elite, symbolic form of seeking for perfection, a sublime alchemy, an approach to that Mind which beyond all images and multiplicities is one within itself — in other words, to God. Pious thinkers of earlier times had represented the life of creatures, say, as a mode of motion toward God, and had considered that the variety of the phenomenal world reached perfection and ultimate cognition only in the divine Unity. Similarly, the symbols and formulas of the Glass Bead Game combined structurally, musically, and philosophically within the framework of a universal language, were nourished by all the sciences and arts, and strove in play to achieve perfection, pure being, the fullness of reality. ”

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

Coretta Scott King photo
H. Havelock Ellis photo

“In philosophy, it is not the attainment of the goal that matters, it is the things that are met with by the way.”

H. Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British physician, writer, and social reformer

Source: The Dance of Life http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300671.txt (1923), Ch. 3

Joseph Massad photo
Rudyard Kipling photo
Ron Paul photo
Geert Wilders photo
Silvio Berlusconi photo
Freeman Dyson photo
Antonio Di Pietro photo

“Today, like it or not, Hamas is a force that has as its goal the overthrow of the State of Israel. With terrorism. Do not you talk to who has not abandoned terrorism and still does not recognize Israel. I would say more … What to talk should melt. The terrorist is a terrorist.”

Antonio Di Pietro (1950) Italian politician, magistrate and lawyer

Corriere dell Sera http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2007/agosto/15/errore_non_dialoga_coi_terroristi_co_9_070815102.shtml (17th August 2007)

George W. Bush photo
Andrei Sakharov photo
William Westmoreland photo
Jermain Defoe photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Hermann Hesse photo
Georges Cuvier photo
Bill Russell photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Aleister Crowley photo
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel photo

“An artist is he for whom the goal and center of life is to form his mind.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Künstler ist ein jeder, dem es Ziel und Mitte des Daseyns ist, seinen Sinn zu bilden.
“Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) # 20

Bruce Schneier photo
Kent Hovind photo
Jozef Israëls photo

“.. an original Jewish art can only come into existence when the Jews have own ground under their feet and live in freedom [Bainin asked him: 'is that not what Zionism wants to reach?'] Yes, Zionism is a noble thought, but who knows whether they will reach their goal? Herzl visited me [in The Hague, Oct. 1898], he is a noble man and believes in his idea. But who will know... Now it is our duty to fight against Antisemitism, to protest against the injustice and violence that is done to us.... what is the essence of Jewish art should be determined by writers and art critics: we painters must work and not philosophize.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): ..een oorspronkelijke joodse kunst [kan] alleen tot stand komen, wanneer de joden eigen grond onder de voeten hebben en een vrij leven leiden [Bainin vroeg hem dan: 'is dat niet wat het Zionisme wil?'] Ja, het nl:Zionisme is een edele gedachte, maar wie weet of ze hun doel bereiken? Herzl heeft mij bezocht [in Den Haag, Oct. 1898], hij is een nobel mens en gelooft in zijn idee. Maar wie weet.. .Nu is het onze plicht het antisemitisme te bestrijden, tegen het onrecht en het geweld dat ons wordt aangedaan te protesteren.. ..wat het wezen is van de joodse kunst moeten schrijvers en kunstcritici maar bepalen: wij schilders moeten werken en niet filosoferen.
Quote in an interview with interviewer Bainin, 27 April 1902; as cited in Jozef Israëls, 1824 – 1911, ed. Dieuwertje Dekkers; Waanders, Zwolle 1999, p. 59
At the moment Jozef was working on his painting 'De joodse wetschrijver' or 'De Joodse Bruiloft'
Quotes of Jozef Israels, after 1900

Revilo P. Oliver photo
Kurt Lewin photo

“To instigate changes toward democracy a situation has to be created for a certain period where the leader is sufficiently in control to rule out influences he does not want and to manipulate the situation to a sufficient degree. The goal of the democratic leader in this transition period will have to be the same as any good teacher, namely to make himself superfluous, to be replaced by indigenous leaders from the group.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

As cited in: M.K. Smith (2001) " Kurt Lewin, groups, experiential learning and action research http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-lewin.htm". In: The Encyclopedia of Informal Education.
1940s, Resolving social conflicts; selected papers on group dynamics, 1948

Anton Chekhov photo
Burt Rutan photo
Ted Malloch photo

“Leadership, in other words, is a matter of character, not goals.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 62.

Sung-Yoon Lee photo

“En route to Tokyo in 1945 to embark on the occupation of Japan, U. S. Gen. Douglas MacArthur laid out his goals for Japan to his aide, Maj. Gen. Courtney Whitney: "First destroy the military power, then build up representative government, enfranchise women, free political prisoners, liberate farmers, establish free labor, destroy monopolies, abolish police repression, liberate the press, liberalize education, and decentralize political power."”

Sung-Yoon Lee Korea and East Asia scholar, professor

The transformation of North Korea will require nothing less.
https://foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/16/life_after_kim
Life After Kim
February 16, 2010
Foreign Policy
March 1, 2013
https://www.webcitation.org/6EyqdXfyA?url=http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/02/16/life_after_kim?page=full
March 9, 2013
no

Steven Pinker photo
Richard Nixon photo
Ramanuja photo

“The individual self is subject to beginningless nescience, which has brought about an accumulation of karma, of the nature of both merit and demerit. The flood of such karma causes his entry into four kinds of bodies — heavenly, human, animal and plant beginning with that of Brahma downwards. This ingression into bodies produces the delusion of identity with those respective bodies (and the consequent attachments and aversions). This delusion inevitably brings about all the fears inherent in the state of worldly existence. The entire body of Vedanta aims at the annihilation of these fears. To accomplish their annihilation they teach the following:
(1) The essential nature of the individual self as transcending the body.
(2) The attributes of the individual self.
(3) The essential nature of the Supreme that is the inmost controller of both the material universe and the individual selves.
(4) The attributes of the Supreme.
(5) The devout meditation upon the Supreme.
(6) The goal to which such meditation, leads.
The Vedanta aims at making known the goal attainable through such a life of meditation, the goal being the realization, of the real nature of the individual self and after and through that realization, the direct experience of Brahman, which is of the nature of bliss infinite and perfect.”

Ramanuja (1017–1137) Hindu philosopher, exegete of Vishishtadvaita Vedanta school

Source: Vedartha Sangraham, 11th century, p. 9-10.

James Fenimore Cooper photo

“For ourselves, we firmly believe that the finger of Providence is pointing the way to all races, and colors, and nations, along the path that is to lead the east and the west alike to the great goal of human wants. Demons infest that path, and numerous and unhappy are the wanderings of millions who stray from its course; sometimes in reluctance to proceed; sometimes in an indiscreet haste to move faster than their fellows, and always in a forgetfulness of the great rules of conduct that have been handed down from above. Nevertheless, the main course is onward; and the day, in the sense of time, is not distant, when the whole earth is to be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, "as the waters cover the sea.
One of the great stumbling-blocks with a large class of well-meaning, but narrow-judging moralists, are the seeming wrongs that are permitted by Providence, in its control of human events. Such persons take a one-sided view of things, and reduce all principles to the level of their own understandings. If we could comprehend the relations which the Deity bears to us, as well as we can comprehend the relations we bear to him, there might be a little seeming reason in these doubts; but when one of the parties in this mighty scheme of action is a profound mystery to the other, it is worse than idle, it is profane, to attempt to explain those things which our minds are not yet sufficiently cleared from the dross of earth to understand.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

Preface
Oak Openings or The bee-hunter (1848)

Georges Bataille photo
Ferdinand Foch photo
Ramakrishna photo
Rousas John Rushdoony photo

“The Bible declares blasphemy to be a very serious offense, because any society which begins by profaning God and His authority will soon profane all things. Nothing will be sacred. No authority will stand. The alternative to authority is total terror by the power of State. This is why, as I’ve pointed out more than once, when the authority of God is destroyed, and when the doctrine of Creation was replaced with the doctrine of Evolution, Marx and Engels congratulated one another in that now their position was established. The foundations of all godly authority were shattered when God was no longer viewed as the creator. His Law, His Word, His person became thereby irrelevant to creation. If the Lord God of scripture did not make the Heavens and the earth and all things therein to the last atom, His Word does not govern creation. If Creation is a product of Evolution, then no law outside of itself can govern it. So the alternative to the authority of God is total terror by the power of State. Where there is no authority, there is soon no justice, because men then no longer speak the same moral languages of law and authority. The respect for God’s authority establishes communication and healthy dissent, the kind of dissent which thrives in an anarchist situation is the dissent of increasing evil, violence and destruction. Godly dissent is constructive, not destructive, and its goal is justice and holiness.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Blasphemy (n. d.)

Guy Debord photo
Jonah Goldberg photo
Bonnie Koppell photo
Christiaan Barnard photo

“The prime goal is to alleviate suffering, and not to prolong life. And if your treatment does not alleviate suffering, but only prolongs life, that treatment should be stopped.”

Christiaan Barnard (1922–2001) South-African physician

Quoted in Oxford Dictionary of Medical Quotations by Peter McDonald (Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 9 https://books.google.it/books?id=MuTnCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA9.
Attributed

Roger Waters photo

“I have nothing against Dave Gilmour furthering his own goals. It's just the idea of Dave's solo career masquerading as Pink Floyd that offends me!”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

Penthouse Magazine, September, 1988
Music

William Luther Pierce photo
Linda McQuaig photo
Vladimir I. Arnold photo

“In the last 30 years, the prestige of mathematics has declined in all countries. I think that mathematicians are partially to be blamed as well—foremost, Hilbert and Bourbaki—the ones who proclaimed that the goal of their science was investigation of all corollaries of arbitrary systems of axioms.”

Vladimir I. Arnold (1937–2010) Russian mathematician

Interview translated from the Russian into English and republished in the book Boris A. Khesin; Serge L. Tabachnikov (editors), Arnold: Swimming Against the Tide (2014) Google Books preview http://books.google.com/books?id=aBWHBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA4 pages 4–5.

“This article [entitled A framework for the comparative analysis of organizations], was one of three independent statements in 1967 of what came to be called "contingency theory." It held that the structure of an organization depends upon (is ‘contingent’ upon) the kind of task performed, rather than upon some universal principles that apply to all organizations. The notion was in the wind at the time.
I think we were all convinced we had a breakthrough, and in some respects we did — there was no one best way of organizing; bureaucracy was efficient for some tasks and inefficient for others; top managers tried to organize departments (research, production) in the same way when they should have different structures; organizational comparisons of goals, output, morale, growth, etc., should control for types of technologies; and so on. While my formulation grew out of fieldwork, my subsequent research offered only modest support for it. I learned that managers had other ends to maximize than efficient production and they sometimes sacrificed efficiency for political and personal ends.”

Charles Perrow (1925–2019) American sociologist

Charles Perrow, in "This Week’s Citation Classic." in: CC, Nr. 14. April 6, 1981 (online at garfield.library.upenn.edu)
Comment:
The other two 1967 publications were Paul R. Lawrence & Jay W. Lorsch. Organization and environment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967, and James D. Thompson. Organizations in action. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967.
1980s and later

Judith Krug photo

“One of the goals of education should be to teach that life is precious.”

Source: Motivation and Personality (1954), p. 255.

Ben Gibbard photo