Quotes about purpose (3092 quotes, page 12)

“The distinction between identifying reference and uniquely existential assertion is something quite undeniable. The sense in which the existence of something answering to a definite description used for the purpose of identifying reference, and its distinguishability by an audience from anything else, is presupposed and not asserted in an utterance containing such an expression, so used, stands absolutely firm, whether or not one opts for the view that radical failure of the presupposition would deprive the statement of a truth-value. It remains a decisive objection to the theory of Descriptions… that… it amounts to a denial of these undeniable distinctions.”

P. F. Strawson (1919–2006) British philosopher

Strawson (1964) "Identifying Reference and Truth-Values", Theoria Vol xxx; As cited in: Paul Snowdon (2009) " Peter Frederick Strawson http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/strawson/", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Truth , Failure , Decision , Sense

“Since society is only a group of individuals interacting according to their various purposes and plans, society has no ‘good’ apart from that of the units of which it is composed.”

Roy A. Childs, Jr. (1949–1992) American libertarian essayist and critic

"The Epistemological Status of the Issue,” 1971-72

“The so-called obscurity of modernist literature has, of course, a lot to do with the new stress on exegesis. When the overt meaning of a work can no longer be taken for granted, criticism is forced — or seems forced — to undertake the explication of the text of the work before doing anything else. But experience has shown us by now that the drift and shape of an "obscure" poem or novel can be grasped for the purposes of art without being "worked out." Part of the triumph of modernist poetry is, indeed, to have demonstrated the great extent to which verse can do without explicit meaning and yet not sacrifice anything essential to its effect as art. Here, as before, successful art can be depended upon to explain itself.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

"T.S. Eliot: A Book Review" (1950/1956), p. 244
1960s, Art and Culture: Critical Essays, (1961)

Art , Literature , Success , Parting

“The cell phones in the pockets of the dead students were still ringing when we were told that it was wrong to ask why. As the police cleared the bodies from the Virginia Tech engineering building, the cell phones rang, in the eccentric varieties of ring tones, as parents kept trying to see if their children were OK. To imagine the feelings of the police as they carried the bodies and heard the ringing is heartrending; to imagine the feelings of the parents who were calling — dread, desperate hope for a sudden answer and the bliss of reassurance, dawning grief — is unbearable. But the parents, and the rest of us, were told that it was not the right moment to ask how the shooting had happened — specifically, why an obviously disturbed student, with a history of mental illness, was able to buy guns whose essential purpose is to kill people — and why it happens over and over again in America.”

Adam Gopnik (1956) American journalist

Gun Control and the Virginia Tech Massacre, The New Yorker (2007)

Children , People , Hope , Feeling

“When one is aligned with the purpose of service, acts that seem exceptionally courageous to others are a matter of course.
When one experiences the world as abundant, then acts of generosity are natural, since there is no doubt about continued supply.
When one sees other people as reflections of oneself, forgiveness becomes second nature, as one realizes “But for the grace of God, so go I.”
When one appreciates the order, beauty, mystery, and connectedness of the universe, a deep joy and cheerfulness arises that nothing can shake.
When one sees time as abundant and life as infinite, one develops superhuman patience.
When one lets go of the limitations of reductionism, objectivity, and determinism, technologies become possible that the science of separation cannot countenance.
When one lets go of the story of the discrete and separate self, amazing intuitive and perceptual capabilities emerge from lifelong latency.”

Charles Eisenstein (1967) American writer

The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible. The Vision and Practice of Interbeing (2013)

Life , God , People , World

“On this new earth, cleansed and renovated—this eternal new earth—we will fulfill our eternal purpose for God. It is heaven on earth—always better.”

Paul P. Enns (1937) American theologian

Source: Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011), p. 108

God

“Just as economic pressure from the base … is able to modify the production of surplus value, so pressure grounded in spatial practice is alone capable of modifying the apportionment of that surplus value — i. e. the distribution of the portion of social surplus production allotted to society's collective 'interests', to so-called social services. Such grass-roots pressure, if it is to be effective in this regard, cannot be confined to attacking the state qua guardian of the 'general interest'. For this state, born of the hegemony of a class, has as one of its functions — and a more and more significant function — the organization of space, the regularization of its flows, the control of its networks. It devotes to these purposes a considerable part of global surplus value, of the surplus production assigned to the running of society.”

Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991) French philosopher

Henri Lefebvre (1974) The Production of Space. Translated to English in 1991 by Donald Nicholson-Smith; As cited in: "Henri Lefebvre on Governance and Space" on thepolisblog.org 2012.10
Other quotes

Grass , Parting

“There's no need to be popular & win the approval of others. The Almighty did not create you for this purpose. Stay true to yourself.”

Ismail ibn Musa Menk (1975) Muslim cleric and Grand Mufti of Zimbabwe.

24 June 2016 https://twitter.com/muftimenk/status/746363830985428993
Twitter

“There ought to be a great effort of the Liberal party to extend the labour representation in Parliament. …. And we affirm that it is among the high and indispensable duties of the party…to proceed to provide for the establishment of district councils and parish councils, and thereby to bring self-government to the very doors of the labouring men throughout the country. Further, I will add boldly that it will be their duty to enact compulsory powers for the purpose of enabling suitable bodies to acquire land upon fair and suitable terms, in order to place the rural population in nearer relations to the land, to the use and profit of the land which they have so long tilled for the benefit of others, but for themselves almost in vain.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Newcastle (2 October 1891), quoted in A. W. Hutton and H. J. Cohen (eds.), The Speeches of The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone on Home Rule, Criminal Law, Welsh and Irish Nationality, National Debt and the Queen's Reign. 1888–1891 (London: Methuen, 1902), pp. 383-384, 386.
1890s

Men , Effort , Country

“"Hair loss and retrieval" (Translation of "Pérdida y recuperación del pelo")

To combat pragmatism and the horrible tendency to achieve useful purposes, my elder cousin proposes the procedure of pulling out a nice hair from the head, knotting it in the middle and droping it gently down the hole in the sink. If the hair gets caught in the grid that usually fills in these holes, it will just take to open the tap a little to lose sight of it.

Without wasting an instant, must start the hair recovery task. The first operation is reduced to dismantling the siphon from the sink to see if the hair has become hooked in any of the rugosities of the drain. If it is not found, it is necessary to expose the section of pipe that goes from the siphon to the main drainage pipe. It is certain that in this part will appear many hairs and we will have to count on the help of the rest of the family to examine them one by one in search of the knot. If it does not appear, the interesting problem of breaking the pipe down to the ground floor will arise, but this means a greater effort, because for eight or ten years we will have to work in a ministry or trading house to collect enough money to buy the four departments located under the one of my elder cousin, all that with the extraordinary disadvantage of what while working during those eight or ten years, the distressing feeling that the hair is no longer in the pipes anymore can not be avoided and that only by a remote chance remains hooked on some rusty spout of the drain.

The day will come when we can break the pipes of all the departments, and for months to come we will live surrounded by basins and other containers full of wet hairs, as well as of assistants and beggars whom we will generously pay to search, assort, and bring us the possible hairs in order to achieve the desired certainty. If the hair does not appear, we will enter in a much more vague and complicated stage, because the next section takes us to the city's main sewers. After buying a special outfit, we will learn to slip through the sewers at late night hours, armed with a powerful flashlight and an oxygen mask, and explore the smaller and larger galleries, assisted if possible by individuals of the underworld, with whom we will have established a relationship and to whom we will have to give much of the money that we earn in a ministry or a trading house.

Very often we will have the impression of having reached the end of the task, because we will find (or they will bring us) similar hairs of the one we seek; but since it is not known of any case where a hair has a knot in the middle without human hand intervention, we will almost always end up with the knot in question being a mere thickening of the caliber of the hair (although we do not know of any similar case) or a deposit of some silicate or any oxide produced by a long stay against a wet surface. It is probable that we will advance in this way through various sections of major and minor pipes, until we reach that place where no one will decide to penetrate: the main drain heading in the direction of the river, the torrential meeting of detritus in which no money, no boat, no bribe will allow us to continue the search.

But before that, and perhaps much earlier, for example a few centimeters from the mouth of the sink, at the height of the apartment on the second floor, or in the first underground pipe, we may happen to find the hair. It is enough to think of the joy that this would cause us, in the astonished calculation of the efforts saved by pure good luck, to choose, to demand practically a similar task, that every conscious teacher should advise to its students from the earliest childhood, instead of drying their souls with the rule of cross-multiplication or the sorrows of Cancha Rayada.”

Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) Argentinian writer

Historias de Cronopios y de Famas (1962)

Money , Family , Way , Feeling

“The poacher … is asserting a right (and an instinct) belonging to a past time—when for hunting purposes all land was held in common. … In those times private property was theft. Obviously the man who attempted to retain for himself land or goods, or who fenced off a portion of the common ground and—like the modern landlord—would allow no one to till it who did not pay him a tax—was a criminal of the deepest dye. Nevertheless the criminals pushed their way to the front, and have become the respectables of modern society.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Defence of Criminals: A Criticism of Morality (1889)

Way , Time , Past

“Reform is a word you always ought to watch out for. Like, when Mao started the Cultural Revolution it wasn't called a reform. Reform is a change that you're supposed to like. So as soon as you hear the word reform you can reach for your wallet and see who's lifting it. […] Subsidy is another interesting word, kind of like reform. It's a subsidy if public funds are used for public purposes. That's called a subsidy. It's not called a subsidy when it goes to private wealth. That's reform or something.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk titled "Free Market Fantasies" at Harvard University, April 13, 1996 https://chomsky.info/19960413/.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999

Change , Wealth

“The noise against me is only the means by which the Jews and Communists are attempting and with good success to implement a further dismemberment of Germany. I think that if I resigned as I threatened to do yesterday, it would simply discredit me to no purpose... This august lady [Fifteenth Army]... has the job of reviewing the strategy and tactics of the war to see how the former conformed to the unit plans and how the tactics changed. Were it not for the fact that it will be, so far as I am concerned, a kick up stairs, I would like it much better than being a sort of executioner to the best race in Europe.
Later when people wake up to what is going on here, I can admit why I took the job.
Am I weak and a coward? Am I putting my posthumous reputation above my present honor? God how I wish I knew…
P. S. No one gives a damn how well Bavaria is run. All they are interested in now is how well it is ruined.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Letter to Beatrice (29 September 1945), published in The Patton Papers (1996), edited by Martin Blumenson Vol. 2 , p. 786 https://books.google.com/books?id=XGP_AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA786

God , War , People , Thinking

“I am hopeful that the conference can coordinate our national resources and opportunities in a way better to serve this purpose. It is by no means intended that there should be any suggestion of Federal domination in these activities. Necessarily they are largely local and individual, and to be helpful they must always be spontaneous. But this conference can be of great aid by making something of an inventory of our national resources and opportunities and determining how these may best be put to the most desirable use, and, further, by exchanging ideas, create new interests and open to view new fields.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Democracy of Sports (1924)

Hope , Way , Idea , Help

“I am not saying that the events in one life cause the events in another, but that there is an overall pattern - a bank of probable events - and that in each life each individual chooses those that suit his or her overall private purposes. Yet those lives will be connected. An individual may have a serious illness in one life. That event may turn up as one uncomfortable nightmare in another existence. In still another life, the individual might have a dear friend who suffers from the same disease. In still another existence the individual might decide to be a doctor, to seek a cause and a cure for the same disease.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Way Toward Health (1997), p. 229

Life , Disease , Suffering

“I'm conservative, and even very conservative. But I'm quite liberal and getting much more liberal on health care and other things. I really say: What's the purpose of a country if you're not going to have defensive and health care? If you can't take care of your sick in the country, forget it, it's all over. I mean, it's no good. So I'm very liberal when it comes to health care. I believe in universal health care. I believe in whatever it takes to make people well and better.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Interview with Larry King http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/10/08/trump.transcript/ CNN (October 1999)
1990s

People , Health , Country , Forgetting

“The ultimate of taxation-for-social-purposes is absolutism, not only because the growing fiscal power carries an equal increase in political power, but because the investment of revenue in the individual by the State gives it a pecuniary interest in him. If the State supplies him with all his needs and keeps him in health and a degree of comfort, it must account him a valuable asset, a piece of capital. Any claim to individual rights is liquidated by society's cash investment. The State undertakes to protect society's investment, as to reimbursement and profit, by way of taxation. The motor power lodged in the individual must be put to the best use so that the yield will further social ends, as foreseen by the management. Thus, the fiscal scheme which begins with distribution is forced by the logic of events into control of production. And the concept of natural rights is inconsistent with the social obligation of the individual. He lives for the State which nurtured him. He belongs to the State by right of purchase.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

“Taxation is Robbery,” Chicago: Human Events Associates (1947)

Health , Way , Nature

“Movies make hash of the schoolmarm’s approach of how well the artist fulfilled his intentions. Whatever the original intention of the writers and director, it is usually supplanted, as the production gets under way, by the intention to make money — and the industry judges the film by how well it fulfills that intention. But if you could see the "artist’s intentions" you’d probably wish you couldn’t anyway. Nothing is so deathly to enjoyment as the relentless march of a movie to fulfill its obvious purpose. This is, indeed, almost a defining characteristic of the hack director, as distinguished from an artist.”

Pauline Kael book Going Steady

Going Steady (1969), Trash, Art and the Movies (February 1969)

Money , Way

“Perhaps the most dangerous element that was picked out of the Muslim tradition and changed and transformed in the hands of these young men who perpetrated Sept. 11 is this idea of committing suicide. They call it martyrdom, of course. Suicide is firmly rejected in Islam as an act of worship. In the tradition, generally, to die in battle for a larger purpose -- that is, for the sake of the community at large -- is a noble thing to do. Self-sacrifice yourself as you defend the community -- that is a traditional thing, and that has a traditional meaning of "jihad." But what is non-traditional, what is new is this idea that jihad is almost like an act of private worship. You become closer to God by blowing yourself up in such a way. You, privately, irrespective of what effect it has on everyone else…. For these young men, that is the new idea of jihad. This idea of jihad allows you to lose all the old distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, between just and unjust wars, between the rules of engagement of different types. All of that is gone, because now the act of martyrdom is an act of worship… in and of itself. It's like going on the pilgrimage. It's like paying your alms, which every Muslim has to do. It's like praying in the direction of Mecca, and so on and so forth. It is an individual act of worship. That's terrifying, and that's new. That's an entirely new idea, which these young men have taken out, developed.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/interviews/makiya.html, PBS Frontline (2002)

Men , God , War , Way

“As there are three of us come on purpose for the game, you won't be so cantankerous as to spoil the party by sitting out.”

Richard Brinsley Sheridan The Rivals

Act V, sc. iii.
The Rivals (1775)

Game

“That is the central idea of our current tradition. It is the idealization of the mass and the negation of the individual; its panacea, its method of realization, is political direction; its goal, as always, is the undefined Good Society… The aim of pedagogy today is not to prepare the individual for his own enjoyment of life, but to enable him to better serve the mass machine; the psychologist makes adjustment to mass-thought the measure of healthy thinking and living; jurisprudence puts social responsibility ahead of individual responsibility; the concern of the scientist in the discovery of principles is secondary to his preoccupation with mass production; the economist studies institutions, not people; and philosophy rejects speculation as to the nature of man or the purpose of life as effort that might better be put to the practical problems of society. Ours is the culture of ‘the all,’ rather than ‘the one.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: One is A Crowd: Reflections of An Individualist (1952), pp. 36-37

Life , People , Idea , Nature

John Jay Federalist Papers

1780s, The Federalist Papers, Federalist No. 2 (1787)

Men , War , People , Peace

“The one reasonable goal of social life was affirmed to be the creation of a world of awakened, of sensitive, intelligent, and mutually understanding personalities, banded together for the common purpose of exploring the universe and developing the human spirit’s manifold potentialities.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter VII: More Worlds; 1. A Symbiotic Race (p. 81)

Life , World , Intelligence , Understanding

“We men do nothing but lie and make ourselves important. Speech was invented for the purpose of magnifying all of our sensations and impressions — perhaps so that we could believe in them.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

Niebla [Mist] (1914)

Men , Lie

“I have encountered a few "creationists" and because they were usually nice, intelligent people, I have been unable to decide whether they were really mad, or only pretending to be mad. If I was a religious person, I would consider creationism nothing less than blasphemy. Do its adherents imagine that God is a cosmic hoaxer who has created the whole vast fossil record for the sole purpose of misleading humankind? And, although I do not necessarily agree with the paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin's advocacy of evolution as a major proof of the glory of God, de Chardin's attitude is both logical and inspiring. A creator who laid the foundations for the entire future at the beginning of time is far more awesome than a clumsy tinkerer who constantly modifies his creations and throws away entire species in the process.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Presidents, Experts, and Asteroids, essay for journal Science, pp 1532-3 (5 June 1998)
1990s

God , People , Imagination , Intelligence

“A monotonous life, lived without any purpose or direction, is not worth much. To achieve anything big in life, you should be prepared to risk your all and take a leap of faith for whatever they believed in.”

Deendayal Upadhyaya (1916–1968) RSS thinker and co-founder of the political party Bharatiya Jana Sangh

'Dao lagaao zindagi pe’ (put a stake on your life), Deendayalji’s article, quoted in L.K. Advani, My Country My Life (2008)

Life , Faith

“The manner in which mathematical theories are applied does not depend on preconceived ideas; it is a purposeful technique depending on, and changing with, experience.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Introduction, The Nature of Probability Theory, p. 2 - 3.
An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition)

Mathematics , Idea , Change , Dependency

“If by the time we're sixty we haven't learned what a knot of paradox and contradiction life is, and how exquisitely the good and the bad are mingled in every action we take, and what a compromising hostess Our Lady of Truth is, we haven't grown old to much purpose.”

John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) British writer, lecturer and philosopher

The Art of Growing Old (1944), p. 13

Life , Truth , Learning , Time

“When we scrutinize the actual procedures that may be called projective methods we find a wide variety of techniques and material being employed for the same general purpose, to obtain from the subject 'what he cannot or will not say,' frequently because he does not know himself and is not aware what he is revealing about himself through his projections.”

Lawrence K. Frank (1890–1968) American cyberneticist

Source: Projective methods for the study of personality (1939), p. 404 as cited in: Gardner Lindzey (1961) Projective Techniques and Cross-Cultural Research. p. 36

“Our culture is teleological-it presumes purposive development and a conclusion.”

William Pfaff (1928–2015) American journalist

Source: Barbarian Sentiments - How The American Century Ends (1989), Chapter 6, Japan, China and the Making of nations, p. 164.

“My "Poems" were written without a purpose, other than the expression of faiths and ideals strongly realized and emotions keenly felt. They were written for the joy of writing, and for the satisfaction of an irresistible impulse. It is my belief that it is not the business of art either to teach or to preach.”

Florence Earle Coates (1850–1927) American writer and poet

Written at Camp Elsinore, Upper St. Regis Lake, New York, June 24, 1898. From Book News, Aug 1898.

Faith , Art , Business , Joy

“Everything had purpose, signal, meaning.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Let the Great World Spin (2009), Let the Great World Spin Forever Down

“There is a simpler, finer way to organize human endeavor. I have declared this for many years and seen it to be true in many places. This simpler way is demonstrated to us in daily life, not the life we see on the news with its unending stories of human grief and horror, but what we feel when we experience a sense of life's deep harmony, beauty, and power, of how we feel when we see people helping each other, when we feel creative, when we know we're making a difference, when life feels purposeful.”

Margaret J. Wheatley (1941) American writer

Finding Our Way: Leadership For an Uncertain Time (2005)

Life , People , Beauty , Way

“If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

Source: Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (1994), p. 58.

Life , Death , God , Universe

“There is no European nation which, within the course of half a century, or little more, has undergone so complete a change as this kingdom of Scotland. The effects of the insurrection of the 1745 — the destruction of the patriarchal power of the Highland chiefs — the abolition of the heritable jurisdictions of the Lowland nobility and barons — the total eradication of the Jacobite party […]. […] This race has now almost entirely vanished from the land, and with it, doubtless, much absurd political prejudice — but also many living examples of singular ad disinterested attachment to the principles of loyalty which they received from their fathers, and of old Scottish faith, hospitality, worth, and honour. […] for the purpose of preserving some idea of the ancient manners of which I have witnessed the almost total extinction, I have embodied in imaginary scenes […].”

Walter Scott book Waverley

Source: Waverley (1814), Chapter LXXII, A postscript, which should have been a preface

Faith , Idea , Change , Loyalty

“The purpose of income calculations in practical affairs is to give people an indication of the amount which they can consume without impoverishing themselves. Following out this idea, it would seem that we ought to define a man's income as the maximum value which he can consume during a week, and still expect to be as well off at the end of the week as he was at the beginning.”

John Hicks (1904–1989) British economist

Source: Value and capital, (1939), p. 172

People , Idea

“The work of art is born of the artist in a mysterious and secret way. From him it gains life and being. Nor is its existence casual and inconsequent, but it has a definite and purposeful strength, alike in its material and spiritual life.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

VIII. Art and Artists
1910 - 1915, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1911

Life , Secret , Art , Way

“The infidels demolished a mosque that was under construction and wounded the artisans. When the news reached Shah Yasin, he came to Banaras from Mandyawa and collecting the Muslim weavers, demolished the big temple. A Sayyid who was an artisan by profession agreed with one Abdul Rasul to build a mosque at Banaras and accordingly the foundation was laid. Near the place there was a temple and many houses belonging to it were in the occupation of the Rajputs. The infidels decided that the construction of a mosque in the locality was not proper and that it should be razed to the ground. At night the walls of the mosque were found demolished. Next day the wall was rebuilt but it was again destroyed. This happened three or four times. At last the Sayyid hid himself in a corner. With the advent of night the infidels came to achieve their nefarious purpose. When Abdul Rasul gave the alarm, the infidels began to fight and the Sayyid was wounded by Rajputs. In the meantime, the Musalman resident of the neighbourhood arrived at the spot and the infidels took to their heels. The wounded Muslims were taken to Shah Yasin who determined to vindicate the cause of Islam. When he came to the mosque, people collected from the neighbourhood. The civil officers were outwardly inclined to side with the saint, but in reality they were afraid of the royal displeasure on account of the Raja, who was a courtier of the Emperor and had built the temple (near which the mosque was under construction). Shah Yasin, however, took up the sword and started for Jihad. The civil officers sent him a message that such a grave step should not be taken without the Emperor's permission. Shah Yasin, paying no heed, sallied forth till he reached Bazar Chau Khamba through a fusillade of stones' The, doors (of temples) were forced open and the idols thrown down. The weavers and other Musalmans demolished about 500 temples. They desired to destroy the temple of Beni Madho, but as lanes were barricaded, they desisted from going further.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh) Ganj-i-Arshadi, cited in : Sharma, Sri Ram, Religious Policy of the Mughal Emperors, Bombay, 1962. p. 144-45
Quotes from late medieval histories

People , Reality , Time , Fight

“A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge. Consider, sir; what is the purpose of courts of justice? It is, that every man may have his cause fairly tried, by men appointed to try causes. A lawyer is not to tell what he knows to be a lie: he is not to produce what he knows to be a false deed; but he is not to usurp the province of the jury and of the judge, and determine what shall be the effect of evidence — what shall be the result of legal argument.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

August 15, 1773
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785)

Men , Lie , Justice , Business

“Active defense is also known as offensive defense, or defense by decisive battles. Passive defense is also known as purely defensive defense or pure defense. Passive defense is actually a sham defense; active defense is the only real defense, the only defense for the purpose of counter-attacking and taking the offensive. As far as I known, there is no military manual of any value, nor is there any reasonably intelligent military expert, ancient or modern, Chinese or foreign, that does not oppose passive defense, wether strategically or tactically. Only the greatest fool or madman would hold up passive defense as a magic weapon.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

As quoted in Mao's Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings, 1912-49: v. 5: Toward the Second United Front, January 1935-July 1937: Revolutionary Writings, 1912-49 https://books.google.com.ar/books?id=USEvDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT861 (2017), p. 861, Routledge.

Fools , Intelligence , Decision

“The animating purpose of James was, on the other hand, primarily moral and artistic. It is expressed in his phrase, "block universe," employed as a term of adverse criticism. Mechanism and idealism were abhorrent to him because they both hold to a closed universe in which there is no room for novelty and adventure. Both sacrifice individuality and all the values, moral and aesthetic, which hang upon individuality; for according to absolute idealism, as to mechanistic materialism, the individual is simply a part determined by the whole of which he is a part. Only a philosophy of pluralism, of genuine indetermination, and of change which is real and intrinsic gives significance to individuality. It alone justifies struggle in creative activity and gives opportunity for the emergence of the genuinely new.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

Universe , Change , Animals , Parting

“It is this thinking which I think gives rise to the greatest tragedies of history, this sense of commitment to a past purpose which reinforces the original agreement precisely at a time when experience has shown that it must be reversed.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

Source: 1970s-1980s, The Limits Of Organization (1974), Chapter 1, Rationality: Individual And Social, p. 29

History , Thinking , Sense , Time

“The claim "I deserve my income," as applied to an individual's pretax income in free market economies, has considerable intuitive force. If true, it suggests a powerful moral claim against taxation for redistributive purposes, on the intuitively plausible supposition that a just economic order ought to ensure that people get what they morally deserve.
But, however intuitive these claims may be, they are unjustified. In two of his important works of political economy, The Constitution of Liberty (see esp. ch. 6), and Law, Legislation, and Liberty (vol. 2), Hayek explained why free market prices cannot, and should not, track claims of individual moral desert.”

Elizabeth S. Anderson (1959) professor of philosophy and womens' studies

How Not to Complain About Taxes (III): "I deserve my pretax income" http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2005/01/how_not_to_comp_1.html (January 26, 2005)

People , Law

“Scientists, animated by the purpose of proving they are purposeless, constitute an interesting subject for study.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

The Function of Reason (1929), Beacon Books, 1958, p. 16
1920s

Study , Animals

“The purpose of spending years developing an organizational theory is the hope that it will lead to improvements in organizations.”

Kenneth D. Mackenzie (1937) American management consultant

Kenneth D. Mackenzie (2011). The Organizational Hologram. p. 11

Hope

“It is unnecessary for our pupose to go into the sordid details of the Company's early administration of their Diwani of Bengal. In brief, it may be stated that for a decade the whole power of the organized State was directed to a single purpose ‑ plunder. It was a robber State that had come into existence, and Richard Becher, a servant of the Company, wrote to his masters in London on May 24, 1769, as follows: `It must give pain to an Englishman to have reason to think that since the accession of the Company to the Diwani the condition of the people of this country has been worse than it was before …. This fine country, which flourished under the most despotic and arbitrary government, is verging towards ruin.'…”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

Pain , People , Thinking , Country

“Now among the other things proper to recreate man and give him pleasure, music is either the first or one of the principal; and we must think that it is a gift of God deputed for that purpose.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Introduction, Geneva Psalter 1539.

God , Pleasure , Music , Thinking

“Selflessness is the ingredient most lacking in today’s world, because people misunderstand the purpose and principle behind this wonderful science. Genuine selflessness is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

?
Books, The Beggar, Volume III: False Ego: The Greatest Enemy of the Spiritual Leader (Hari-Nama Press, 2002)

People , World , Thinking , Science

“Paramount among such events is the Jewish holocaust during World War II, which Zionists used for propagandistic purposes to assert their "right" to Palestine to which they had laid their suspect colonial claim half a century earlier. In appropriating the holocaust and its victims, Zionism and Israel asserted that any acknowledgment of the holocaust is an acknowledgment of Israel's "right to exist," and conversely that any attempt to deny Israel its alleged right to exist was perforce a denial of the holocaust.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Massad, in "Palestinians and Jewish History: Recognition or Submission?", Journal of Palestine Studies, 2000
"Palestinians and Jewish History: Recognition or Submission?"

War , World

“Now my humble fear is that this double training, in language as well as in thought, imposes somewhat too heavy a burden upon the young, especially when, at the age of three years old, they are taken from the maternal care and taught to unlearn the old language — except for the purpose of repeating it in the presence of their Mothers and Nurses — and to learn the vocabulary and idiom of science. Already methinks I discern a weakness in the grasp of mathematical truth at the present time as compared with the more robust intellect of our ancestors three hundred years ago.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 12. Of the Doctrine of our Priests

Truth , Age , Fear , Mathematics

“Since World War Two, Britain's elite has suffered from a collective collapse of cultural nerve. Many things contributed: postwar exhaustion, the collapse of the British Empire (and therefore of national purpose), and post-colonial flagellatory guilt of the kind that white western liberals have made their specialty. This left the British establishment vulnerable to the revolutionary ideology of the New Left, at the core of which lay a hatred of western society. As a consequence, the British elite decided not only that the British nation was an embarrassment but also that the very idea of the nation was an anachronism.”

Melanie Phillips (1951) British journalist

"The Country That Hates Itself" http://www.melaniephillips.com/the-country-that-hates-itself (June 16, 2006)

War , World , Idea , Suffering

“Most theories of learning have been based on ideas of "reinforcement" of success. But all these theories postulate a single, centralized reward mechanism. I doubt this could suffice for human learning because the recognition of which events should be considered memorable cannot be a single, uniform process. It requires too much "intelligence." Instead I think such recognitions must be made, for each division of the mind, by some other agency that has engaged the present one for a purpose.”

Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) American cognitive scientist

K-Linesː A Theory of Memory (1980)

Intelligence , Idea , Thinking , Learning

“An adequately designed spillway is critical to pond management. The purpose of the spillway is to carry surplus water from the pond, away from the face of the dam. It may consist of a mechanical control, such as an exit pipe installed in the base of the dam where it will empty below the dam site.”

Ken Kern American writer

p, 125
The Owner-Built Homestead (1977)

Water

“The five attitudes are: Upper, Middle, Lower, Right Side, and Left Side. These are the five. Although attitude has these five dimensions, the one purpose of all of them is to cut the enemy. There are none but these five attitudes.
Whatever attitude you are in, do not be conscious of making the attitude; think only of cutting.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Water Book

Thinking

“Asjadi composed the following qaSida in honour of this expedition: When the King of kings marched to Somnat, He made his own deeds the standard of miracles' 'Once more he led his army against Somnat, which is a large city on the coast of the ocean, a place of worship of the Brahmans who worship a large idol. There are many golden idols there. Although certain historians have called this idol Manat, and say that it is the identical idol which Arab idolaters brought to the coast of Hindustan in the time of the Lord of the Missive (may the blessings and peace of God be upon him), this story has no foundation because the Brahmans of India firmly believe that this idol has been in that place since the time of Kishan, that is to say four thousand years and a fraction' The reason for this mistake must surely be the resemblance in name, and nothing else' The fort was taken and Mahmud broke the idol in fragments and sent it to Ghaznin, where it was placed at the door of the Jama' Masjid and trodden under foot.'….'In the year AH 402 (AD 1011) he set out for Thanesar and Jaipal, the son of the former Jaipal, offered him a present of fifty elephants and much treasure. The Sultan, however, was not to be deterred from his purpose; so he refused to accept his present, and seeing Thanesar empty he sacked it and destroyed its idol temples, and took away to Ghaznin, the idol known as Chakarsum on account of which the Hindus had been ruined; and having placed it in his court, caused it to be trampled under foot by the people… From thence he went to Mathra (Mathura) which is a place of worship of the infidels and the birthplace of Kishan, the son of Basudev, whom the Hindus Worship as a divinity - where there are idol temples without number, and took it without any contest and razed it to the ground. Great wealth and booty fell into the hands of the Muslims, among the rest they broke up by the orders of the Sultan, a golden idol.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Muntakhabut-Tawarikh, translated into English by George S.A. Ranking, Patna Reprint 1973, Vol. I, p. 17-28
Quotes from Muslim medieval histories

God , People , Peace , Time

“Our people say "Death to America," and this is like saying "I seek God's refuge from the accursed Satan," which is recited before any chapter of the Koran, even before "In the name of Allah the Compassionate, the Merciful." Why is this? So the believer will never forget, even for a moment, the presence of Satan. So he will never forget, even for a moment, that Satan is ready to attack him and to destroy his spiritual shield and is faith… The saying "Death to America" is for this purpose.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

March 14, 2005 speech http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/606.htm
2005

Death , God , People , Faith

“I came to MIT from Harvard University, where I was a lecturer. I had been at the Harvard Psychoacoustic Laboratory during World War II and stayed on at Harvard as a lecturer, mainly doing research, but also a little bit of teaching—statistics and physiological psychology—subjects like that.
Then there came a time that I thought that I had better go pay attention to my career. I had just been having a marvelous time there. I am not a good looker for jobs; I just came to the nearest place I could, which was in our city. I arranged to come down here and start up a psychology section, which we hoped would eventually become a psychology department. For the purposes of having a base of some kind I was in the Electrical Engineering Department. I even taught a little bit of electrical engineering.
I fell in love with the summer study process that MIT had. They had one on undersea warfare and overseas transport—a thing called Project Hartwell. I really liked that. It was getting physicists, mathematicians—everybody who could contribute—to work very intensively for a period of two or three months. After Hartwell there was a project called Project Charles, which was actually two years long (two summers and the time in between). It was on air defense. I was a member of that study. They needed one psychologist and 20 physicists. That led to the creation of the Lincoln Laboratory. It got started immediately as the applied section of the Research Laboratory for Electronics, which was already a growing concern at MIT.”

J. C. R. Licklider (1915–1990) American psychologist and computer scientist

Licklider in: " An Interview with J. C. R. LICKLIDER http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/107436/1/oh150jcl.pdf" conducted by William Aspray and Arthur Norberg on 28 October 1988, Cambridge, MA.

Love , War , World , Hope

“More than any of his predecessors Plato appreciated the scientific possibilities of geometry... By his teaching he laid the foundations of the science, insisting upon accurate definitions, clear assumptions, and logical proof. His opposition to the materialists, who saw in geometry only what was immediately useful to the artisan and the mechanic is… clear. …That Plato should hold the view… is not a cause for surprise. The world's thinkers have always held it. No man has ever created a mathematical theory for practical purposes alone. The applications of mathematics have generally been an afterthought.”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

Source: History of Mathematics (1923) Vol.1, p. 90

World , Mathematics , Science

“Again, the subject of internal improvements, under the power of Congress to regulate commerce, is put at rest under our system. The power, claimed by construction under the old constitution, was at least a doubtful one; it rested solely upon construction. We of the South, generally apart from considerations of constitutional principles, opposed its exercise upon grounds of its inexpediency and injustice. Notwithstanding this opposition, millions of money, from the common treasury had been drawn for such purposes. Our opposition sprang from no hostility to commerce, or to all necessary aids for facilitating it. With us it was simply a question upon whom the burden should fall. In Georgia, for instance, we have done as much for the cause of internal improvements as any other portion of the country, according to population and means. We have stretched out lines of railroads from the seaboard to the mountains; dug down the hills, and filled up the valleys at a cost of not less than $25,000,000. All this was done to open an outlet for our products of the interior, and those to the west of us, to reach the marts of the world. No State was in greater need of such facilities than Georgia, but we did not ask that these works should be made by appropriations out of the common treasury. The cost of the grading, the superstructure, and the equipment of our roads was borne by those who had entered into the enterprise. Nay, more not only the cost of the iron no small item in the aggregate cost was borne in the same way, but we were compelled to pay into the common treasury several millions of dollars for the privilege of importing the iron, after the price was paid for it abroad. What justice was there in taking this money, which our people paid into the common treasury on the importation of our iron, and applying it to the improvement of rivers and harbors elsewhere? The true principle is to subject the commerce of every locality, to whatever burdens may be necessary to facilitate it. If Charleston harbor needs improvement, let the commerce of Charleston bear the burden. If the mouth of the Savannah river has to be cleared out, let the sea-going navigation which is benefited by it, bear the burden. So with the mouths of the Alabama and Mississippi river. Just as the products of the interior, our cotton, wheat, corn, and other articles, have to bear the necessary rates of freight over our railroads to reach the seas. This is again the broad principle of perfect equality and justice, and it is especially set forth and established in our new constitution.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Money , Hostility , People , World

“A noble purpose inspires sacrifice, stimulates innovation, and encourages perseverance. In so doing, it transforms great talent into exceptional accomplishment.”

Gary Hamel (1954) American management expert

Gary Hamel quoted in: Richard L. Daft (2014), The Leadership Experience, p. 409

Perseverance

“"What is the present outlook in the field of energy generation? One word suffices - catastrophic! Through over-illumination and overheating of the media of earth, water and air in Nature's household, a short circuit - 'cold fire' - and the development of cancer has been triggered off. With nuclear fission a conflagration was kindled, whose ashes and slag residues alone will extinguish all life. Thus a reporter stated recently, "For the time being this radiating thing is there and with it the attendant worries as to how we can protect ourselves against these lethal ray, which penetrate even the thickest lead shields." The sheer lunacy of using nuclear power for peaceful purposes will be just as short-lived as the subsequent remorse will be long."”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Implosion Magazine, No. 56, p. 29-30 (Callum Coats: Energy Evolution (2000))
Implosion Magazine

Life , Peace , Nature , Water

“Know that the difficulties which lead to confusion in the question what is the purpose of the Universe or of any of its parts, arise from two causes: first, man has an erroneous idea of himself, and believes that the whole world exists only for his sake; secondly, he is ignorant both about the nature of the sublunary world, and about the Creator's intention to give existence to all beings whose existence is possible, because existence is undoubtedly good.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.25

World , Idea , Question , Nature

“Human rights and the rule of law are vital to global security and prosperity. As Truman said, “We must, once and for all, prove by our acts conclusively that Right Has Might”. That’s why this country has historically been in the vanguard of the global human rights movement. But that lead can only be maintained if America remains true to its principles, including in the struggle against terrorism. When it appears to abandon its own ideals and objectives, its friends abroad are naturally troubled and confused.
— And States need to play by the rules towards each other, as well as towards their own citizens. That can sometimes be inconvenient, but ultimately what matters is not inconvenience. It is doing the right thing. No State can make its own actions legitimate in the eyes of others. When power, especially military force, is used, the world will consider it legitimate only when convinced that it is being used for the right purpose — for broadly shared aims –- in accordance with broadly accepted norms.
— No community anywhere suffers from too much rule of law; many do suffer from too little — and the international community is among them. This we must change.”

Kofi Annan (1938–2018) 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Truman Library address (2006)

World , Law , Communication , Nature

“No tin-hat brigade of goose-stepping vigilantes or bibble-babbling mob of blackguarding and corporation paid scoundrels will prevent the onward march of labor, or divert its purpose to play its natural and rational part in the development of the economic, political and social life of our nation.”

John L. Lewis (1880–1969) American labor leader

Labor and the Nation speech (September 3, 1937)

Life , Nature , Parting

“The real turning point between the medieval age of faith and the modern age of unfaith came when the scientists of the seventeenth century turned their backs upon what used to be called “final causes.” The final cause of a thing or event meant the purpose which it was supposed to serve in the universe, its cosmic purpose.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p.5.

Age , Unfaithfulness , Faith , Universe

“Perhaps she was not really so perfect, but he had made her so in his mind. People did this; he had seen it. As though the world of humans was created from their desires as much as their perception—an issue the empiricists tried to deal with in their natural philosophy.
Although he realized this was a trivial truth, still, trying to comprehend the reality of a situation was his constant activity. He could not necessarily trust the word of ministers, who all had their own purposes; nor what his mother might think, for her own perception was colored by her desire to see people in certain ways. One did not trust the periodicals, certainly, and pamphleteers were never disinterested. Everyone seemed to see the world and events a little differently, depending on their own personal mixture of desire and pragmatism. In history there were any number of rulers whose perception of events was so far removed from reality that it led to calamity. Prince Wilam did not want to be one of those—at any cost. Even if it meant giving up the world as he desired it to be.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: Sea Without a Shore (1996), Chapter 26 (p. 352)

People , Truth , World , Color

“The battle raged with great fury: victory was long doubtful, till two Indian princes, Brahman Dew and Dabishleem, with other reinforcements, joined their countrymen during the action, and inspired them with fresh courage. Mahmood at this moment perceiving his troops to waver, leaped from his horse, and, prostrating himself before God implored his assistance' At the same time he cheered his troops with such energy, that, ashamed to abandon their king, with whom they had so often fought and bled, they, with one accord, gave a loud shout and rushed forwards. In this charge the Moslems broke through the enemy's line, and laid 5,000 Hindus dead at their feet' On approaching the temple, he saw a superb edifice built of hewn stone. Its lofty roof was supported by fifty-six pillars curiously carved and set with precious stones. In the centre of the hall was Somnat, a stone idol five yards in height, two of which were sunk in the ground. The King, approaching the image, raised his mace and struck off its nose. He ordered two pieces of the idol to be broken off and sent to Ghizny, that one might be thrown at the threshold of the public mosque, and the other at the court door of his own palace. These identical fragments are to this day (now 600 years ago) to be seen at Ghizny. Two more fragments were reserved to be sent to Mecca and Medina. It is a well authenticated fact, that when Mahmood was thus employed in destroying this idol, a crowd of Brahmins petitioned his attendants and offered a quantity of gold if the King would desist from further mutilation. His officers endeavoured to persuade him to accept of the money; for they said that breaking one idol would not do away with idolatry altogether; that, therefore, it could serve no purpose to destroy the image entirely; but that such a sum of money given in charity among true believers would be a meritorious act. The King acknowledged that there might be reason in what they said, but replied, that if he should consent to such a measure, his name would be handed down to posterity as 'Mahmood the idol-seller', whereas he was desirous of being known as 'Mahmood the destroyer': he therefore directed the troops to proceed in their work'…'The Caliph of Bagdad, being informed of the expedition of the King of Ghizny, wrote him a congratulatory letter, in which he styled him 'The Guardian of the State, and of the Faith'; to his son, the Prince Ameer Musaood, he gave the title of 'The Lustre of Empire, and the Ornament of Religion'; and to his second son, the Ameer Yoosoof, the appellation of 'The Strength of the Arm of Fortune, and Establisher of Empires.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

He at the same time assured Mahmood, that to whomsoever he should bequeath the throne at his death, he himself would confirm and support the same.'
Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated into English by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, 4 Volumes, New Delhi Reprint, 1981. p. 38-49 (Alternative translation: "but the champion of Islam replied with disdain that he did not want his name to go down to posterity as Mahmud the idol-seller (but farosh) instead of Mahmud the breaker-of-idols (but shikan)." in Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 3)
Sack of Somnath (1025 CE)

Death , Money , God , Faith

“What kind of people do we wish to become, and how do we know an American when we see one? Is it possible to pursue a common purpose without a common history or a standard text?”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

Bomb-O-Gram, p. 31
Waiting For The Barbarians (1997)

People , History

“A command is distinguished from other significations of desire, not by the style in which the desire is signified, but by the power or purpose of the party to inflict an evil or pain in case the desire is disregarded.”

John Austin (legal philosopher) (1790–1859) legal philosopher

Source: The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832), p. 6

Pain , Evil

“Until now, neither the distinction between “worthy, since durable” and “vain, since transient,” nor the unbridgeable abyss separating the two, has disappeared for a moment from reflections on human happiness. Nonentity, the demeaning and humiliating insignificance of the individual bodily presence in the world by comparison with the unperturbed eternity of the world itself, has haunted philosophers (and non-philosophers, during their brief spells of falling into and staying in a philosophical mood) for more than two millennia. In the Middle Ages it was raised to the rank of the highest purpose and supreme concern of mortals, and deployed to promote spiritual values over the pleasures of the flesh—as well as to explain (and, hopefully argue away) the pain and misery of the brief earthly existence as a necessary and therefore welcome prelude to the endless bliss of the afterlife. It returned with the advent of the modern era in a new garb: that of the futility of individual interests and concerns, shown to be abominably short-lived, fleeting and vagrant when juxtaposed with the interests of “the social whole”—the nation, the state, the cause.”

Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) Polish philosopher and sociologist

Source: The Art of Life (2008), p. 31.

Pain , Pleasure , Age , World

“The essential difference between est and Scientology is two-fold. The first has to do with Scientology’s emphasis on survival and its idea that the purpose of life is survival. est sees the purpose of life as wholeness or completion – truth – not survival…The other main difference between est and Scientology lies in the treatment of knowing. Ron Hubbard seems to have no difficulty in codifying the truth and in urging people to believe it. But I suspect all codifications, particularly my own. In presenting my own ideas, I emphasize their epistemological context. I hold them as pointers to the truth, not as the truth itself. I don’t think anyone ought to believe the ideas that we use in est. The est philosophy is not a belief system and most certainly ought not to be believed. In any case, even the truth, when believed, is a lie. You must experience the truth, not believe it.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Interview with William Warren Bartley, cited in — [Bartley, William Warren, w:William Warren Bartley, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1978, New York, 157, 0-517-53502-5]

Life , People , Truth , Lie

“We should judge university philosophy … by its true and proper aim: … that the junior barristers, solicitors, doctors, probationers, and pedagogues of the future should maintain, even in their innermost conviction, the same line of thought in keeping with the aims and intentions that the State and its government have in common with them. I have no objection to this and so in this respect have nothing to say. For I do not consider myself competent to judge of the necessity or needlessness of such a State expedient, but rather leave it to those who have the difficult task of governing men, that is to say, of maintain law and order, … and of protecting the few who have acquired property from the immense number of those who have nothing but their physical strength. … I certainly do not presume to argue with them over the means to be employed in this case; for my motto has always been: “Thank God, each morning, therefore, that you have not the Roman realm to care for!” [Goethe, Faust] But it was these constitutional aims of university philosophy which procured for Hegelry such an unprecedented ministerial favor. For it the State was “the absolute perfect ethical organism,” and it represented as originating in the State the whole aim of human existence. Could there be for future junior barristers and thus for state officials a better preparation than this, in consequence whereof their whole substance and being, their body and soul, were entirely forfeited to the State, like bees in a beehive, and they had nothing else to work for … except to become efficient wheels, cooperating for the purpose of keeping in motion the great State machine, that ultimus finis bonorum [ultimate good]? The junior barrister and the man were accordingly one and the same. It was a real apotheosis of philistinism.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Inzwischen verlangt die Billigkeit, daß man die Universitätsphilosophie nicht bloß, wie hier gescheht!, aus dem Standpunkte des angeblichen, sondern auch aus dem des wahren und eigentlichen Zweckes derselben beurtheile. Dieser nämlich läuft darauf hinaus, daß die künftigen Referendarien, Advokaten, Aerzte, Kandidaten und Schulmänner auch im Innersten ihrer Ueberzeugungen diejenige Richtung erhalten, welche den Absichten, die der Staat und seine Regierung mit ihnen haben, angemessen ist. Dagegen habe ich nichts einzuwenden, bescheide mich also in dieser Hinsicht. Denn über die Nothwendigkeit, oder Entbehrlichkeit eines solchen Staatsmittels zu urtheilen, halte ich mich nicht für kompetent; sondern stelle es denen anheim, welche die schwere Aufgabe haben, Menschen zu regieren, d. h. unter vielen Millionen eines, der großen Mehrzahl nach, gränzenlos egoistischen, ungerechten, unbilligen, unredlichen, neidischen, boshaften und dabei sehr beschränkten und querköpfigen Geschlechtes, Gesetz, Ordnung, Ruhe und Friede aufrecht zu erhalten und die Wenigen, denen irgend ein Besitz zu Theil geworden, zu schützen gegen die Unzahl Derer, welche nichts, als ihre Körperkräfte haben. Die Aufgabe ist so schwer, daß ich mich wahrlich nicht vermesse, über die dabei anzuwendenden Mittel mit ihnen zu rechten. Denn „ich danke Gott an jedem Morgen, daß ich nicht brauch’ für’s Röm’sche Reich zu sorgen,”—ist stets mein Wahlspruch gewesen. Diese Staatszwecke der Universitätsphilosophie waren es aber, welche der Hegelei eine so beispiellose Ministergunft verschafften. Denn ihr war der Staat „der absolut vollendete ethische Organismus,” und sie ließ den ganzen Zweck des menschlichen Daseyns im Staat aufgehn. Konnte es eine bessere Zurichtung für künftige Referendarien und demnächst Staatsbeamte geben, als diese, in Folge welcher ihr ganzes Wesen und Seyn, mit Leib und Seele, völlig dem Staat verfiel, wie das der Biene dem Bienenstock, und sie auf nichts Anderes, weder in dieser, noch in einer andern Welt hinzuarbeiten hatten, als daß sie taugliche Räder würden, mitzuwirken, um die große Staatsmaschine, diesen ultimus finis bonorum, im Gange zu erhalten? Der Referendar und der Mensch war danach Eins und das Selbe. Es war eine rechte Apotheose der Philisterei.
Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, p. 159, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 146-147
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Philosophy in the Universities

Men , God , Law , Soul

“There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another, This conception is a potent menace to social regeneration. All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical.”

Emma Goldman book My Disillusionment in Russia

My Disillusionment in Russia (1923)

Parting

“Jesus Pietro was worried. The Sons of Earth, if they got this far, would go straight to the vivarium to free their compatriots. But if Matthew Keller was his own agent… If the ghost of Alpha Plateau was not a rebel, but a thing with its own unpredictable purpose…
Jesus Pietro worried.”

Larry Niven (1938) American writer

Source: A Gift From Earth (1968), Ch. 10 : Parlette's Hand

“The open system approach to organizations is contrasted with common-sense approaches, which tend to accept popular names and stereotypes as basic organizational properties and to identify the purpose of an organization in terms of the goals of its founders and leaders.
The open system approach, on the other hand, begins by identifying and mapping the repeated cycles of input, transformation, output, and renewed input which comprise the organizational pattern. This approach to organizations represents the adaptation of work in biology and in the physical sciences by von Bertalanffy and others.”

Daniel Katz (1903–1998) American psychologist

Source: The Social Psychology of Organizations (1966), p. 33

Sense , Science

“Party historians go to the past for party purposes; they seek to read into the past the controversies of the present.”

Arnold Toynbee (1852–1883) British economic historian

Source: Lectures on The Industrial Revolution in England (1884), p. 32

Reading , Past

“Paris is a very graceful and beautiful city, almost too formal and sweet to the taste after the raw disorder of New York. Everything seems to have been planned with the purpose of forming a most harmonious whole, which certainly has been done... Every street here is alive with all sorts of conditions of people, priests, nuns, students, and always the little soldiers with wide red pants.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

Quote in Hopper's letter to his mother, Paris, October 30, 1906; as cited in Edward Hopper, Gail Levin, Bonfini Press, Switzerland 1984, p. 13
1905 - 1910

People , Beauty

“A marciful Providunce fashioned us holler
O' purpose thet we might our principles swaller.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

No. 4, st. 2.
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series I (1848)

Fashion

“His military triumphs awakened no pride nor vain glory, as they would have done had they been effected for selfish purposes. In the time of his greatest power he maintained the same simplicity of manners and appearance as in the days of his adversity. So far from affecting a regal state, he was displeased if, on entering a room, any unusual testimonials of respect were shown to him. If he aimed at a universal dominion, it was the dominion of faith; as to the temporal rule which grew up in his hands, as he used it without ostentation, so he took no step to perpetuate it in his family”

Washington Irving (1783–1859) writer, historian and diplomat from the United States

Mahomet and his successors, George P. Putnam, 1850, p. 339.
Mahomet and his successors (1849)

Family , Faith , Universe , Appearance

“It will be the duty of the Executive, with sufficient appropriations for the purpose, to prosecute unsparingly all who have been engaged in depriving citizens of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Fourth State of the Union Address (6 December 1880)

“These institutions have flourished by reason of a common background of experience; they have been perpetuated by a common faith in the righteousness of their purpose; they have been handed down undiminished in effectiveness from our forefathers who conceived their spirit and prepared the foundations. We have put into operation our faith in equal opportunity before the law in exchange for equal obligation of citizenship.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

Faith , Law

“Together with the histories of Polybius and Livy, Cicero’s polemical speeches and writings, and his personal correspondence, form some of the most important historical resources for understanding the Roman legal and political system. Here we focus only on his political theory narrowly construed, part of his program to adapt Greek philosophy to Roman social and political purposes, bypassing even the extended defense of the role of oratory in political life that became something like a handbook for the study of rhetoric.”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

On Politics: A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present (2012), Ch. 4 : Roman Insights: Polybius and Cicero

Life , History , Understanding , Study

“• Deletion of Special provisions under special purpose funds which allow savings from the said funds to be made available to the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the government including Constitutional offices, in compliance with the Supreme Court decision prohibiting the cross-border transfer of savings from the Executive to the other branches of government;”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget

Decision

“From that point, my universe went on crumbling; new cracks appeared all the time. I could see that the pleasant securities of childhood, all of those warm little human emotions, all of those trivial aims and purposes that we allow to rule our lives, were an illusion. We were like sheep munching grass, unaware that the butcher's lorry is already on its way. I got used to living with a deep, underlying feeling of uncertainty that no one around me seemed to share. It was rather like living on death row.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Alien Dawn (1998), pp. 12-13

Death , Way , Feeling , Grass

“Coordination, therefore, is the orderly arrangement of group efforts, to provide unity of action in the pursuit of a common purpose. As coordination is the all inclusive principle of organization it must have its own principle and foundation in authority, or the supreme coordination power. Always, in every form of organization, this supreme authority must rest somewhere, else there would be no directive for any coordinated effort.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: The Principles of Organization, 1947, p. 6

Effort

“To imagine that Caesar aspired to do something in the way Alexander did it — and this is what almost all historians have believed — is definitely to give up trying to understand him. Caesar is very nearly the opposite of Alexander. …[I]t is not merely a universal kingdom that Caesar has in view. His purpose is a deeper one. He wants a Roman empire which does not live on Rome, but on the periphery, on the provinces, and this implies the complete supersession of the City-State. It implies a State in which the most diverse peoples collaborate, in regard to which all feel solidarity.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XIV: Who Rules The World?

People , Way , Feeling , Imagination

“My career as a teacher, researcher, and consultant has been focused on the education of practicing executives to direct their attention to the need for defining the purposes of their own lives and those of their organizations, and to the fact that such purposes should be worth pursuing in terms of profit outcomes and social responsibility.”

Kenneth R. Andrews (1916–2005) Business scholar

Kenneth Andrews, quoted in: Harper W. Moulton. "Profiles in executive education: Ken Andrews." Business Horizons, Vol. 38, Issue 5, Sept.–Oct. 1995, pp. 75-78
Quote

Education , Teachers

“Keep your freedom, keep your immortality, but somewhere along the line I hope you figure out what you're living forever for. What noble purpose you mean to achieve. Because you're no good to anyone here, not even yourselves.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Treason (1988)

Hope , Freedom

“My own experience of mescalin is described in the appendix of Beyond the Outsider. My 'trip' was pleasant enough, although I experienced none of the visual effects described by Huxley; I was plunged into an agreeable but sluggish dreaminess. In this torpid state, I became aware of the problem mentioned by Huxley: 'How was this cleansed perception to be reconciled with a proper concern with human relations…?' -- in my case, with my concern for my wife and three-year-old daughter? Although I personally felt nothing but a sense of relaxation and trustfulness, I was aware that, in practice, the world is full of dangers, and in this state, I was incapable of the necessary vigilance; it made me feel guilty. I was neglecting my job of looking after them. Moreover, my ability to think was impaired. Huxley remarks that he found his own ability to remember and 'think straight' to be little, if at all, reduced. I could 'think straight', but I could not think to any purpose. Even the feeling of universal love was not particularly pleasant; I compared it to having a large alsation dog who puts his paws on your shoulder and licks your face.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Frankenstein's Castle (1980), p. 59-60

Love , World , Dogs , Feeling

“Those who hold that it is no matter what happens after them, hold a wicked and inhuman doctrine… When we feel in our hearts this indifference to the fleeting, and this warm regard for the permanent, let us believe that God has implanted the instinct for a wise purpose; and then follow it as a heavenly guide. It is manifestly intended to turn us from the labors of the day — from the things which perish when the hand which formed ceases to uphold them — to tile things and objects which endure through indefinite ages — renewing, I should rather say augmenting their magnitude and their benificent fruits with every successive generation.”

Daniel Drake (1785–1852) American physician and writer

Daniel Drake and his followers : historical and biographical sketches, 1785-1909 https://archive.org/stream/easttennesseerec00rams/easttennesseerec00rams_djvu.txt (c1909), p. 96

God , Age , Feeling , Success

“At the conclusion of Hollywood disaster movies and epics, time moves backward, piecing together like a jigsaw the elements that had come apart. The Titanic resumes its journey; Russell Crowe is reunited with his murdered wife and son. It's not a happy ending; it's a convention created for the purposes of an impossible sense of uplift at the end of death and tragedy: the happy beginning. Technology makes Hades unnecessary.”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

Friend of My Youth (2017)

Death , Sense , Time , Happiness

“Organization begins when people, even if they be only two or more, combine their efforts for a given purpose. We have shown this by the simple illustration of two people uniting their efforts to lift and move some weighty object. This combination, however, is not the first principle of organization. It is only an illustration of organization itself. To find the first principle, let us carry the illustration a step further. The efforts of these two lifters must be coordinated, which means that they must act together. If first one lifted, and then the other, there would be no unity of action, and hence no true organization of effort. Here then we find the first principles of organization.
The next thing to do in order to explain is what we mean when we call coordination the first principle. We mean that this term expresses the principles of organization in toto; nothing less. This does not mean that there are no subordinated principles; it simply means that all the others are contained in this one of co-ordination. The others are simply the principles through which co-ordination operates, and thus becomes effective.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: Onward Industry!, 1931, p. 19

People , Effort

“The self is a simplification of the notion of soul, created to serve the purposes of the modern sciences of psychology and economics, both of which want you to be happy in a simple, straightforward way they can count.”

Harvey Mansfield (1932) Author, professor

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)

Way , Soul , Science , Happiness

“After retaining power for two months and ten days, the workers of Paris, who for the first time in history established the Commune, the embryo of Soviet power, perished at the hands of the French Cadets, Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries of a Kaledin type. The French workers had to pay an unprecedentedly heavy price for the first experience of workers' government, the meaning and purpose of which the overwhelming majority of the peasants in France did not know.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

“Report on the Activities of the Council of People’s Commissars” (23-31 January 1918) http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/TCS18.html, as translated by Yuri Sdobnikov and George Hanna, Collected Works, Vol. 26, pp. 459-61.
1910s

History , Communication , Time