Quotes about purpose (3092 quotes, page 15)

“The entire purpose of a clean and well-ordered life is to liberate man from the thralldom of chaos and the burden of sorrow. (…) What is wrong with a life which is free from problems? Personality is merely a reflection of the real. (…) Once you realize that the person is merely a shadow of the reality, but not reality itself, you cease to fret and worry. You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Clean, well-ordered life
Source: "I am That.' P.33.

Life , Problem , Reality , Personality

“That afternoon I came to understand that one of the deepest purposes of intellectual sophistication is to provide distance between us and our most disturbing personal truths and gnawing fears.”

Richard Russo book Straight Man

Epilogue.
Straight Man (1997)

Truth , Fear , Understanding , Personality

“Old as the everlasting hills; immovable as the throne of God; and certain as the purposes of eternal power, against all hinderances, and against all delays, and despite all the mutations of human instrumentalities, it is the faith of my soul, that this anti-slavery cause will triumph.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

The Anti-Slavery Movement. Extracts from a Lecture before Various. Anti-Slavery Bodies, in the Winter of 1855.
1850s, My Bondage and My Freedom (1855)

God , Faith , Soul

“Part of your work feels as clear, it gives you a sense of liberation or beauty and you recognize it as necessary pavements. You are thus in a sense ready. In the other part of your work this is not the case. Therein is the hidden development, which is the true essence of art… the higher purpose, the pursuit forward that art automatically calls. The unclear part of your work needs to progress (stopping is no option, is no life, no art) and it is clear when by working with head and heart, the real step forward has been achieved.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

Letter to B. Kramers, 1926, as quoted in: Bram van Velde, A Tribute, Municipal Museum De Lakenhal Leiden, Municipal Museum Schiedam, Museum de Wieger, Deurne 1994, p. 18 (English translation: Charlotte Burgmans)
1920's

Life , Beauty , Art , Feeling

“According to the author, in the reign of James I, quoted above, pall-mall was a pastime not unlike goff, but if the definition of the former given by Cotgrave be correct, it will be found to differ materially from the latter, at least as it was played in modern times. "Pale-maille," says he, "is a game wherein a round box ball is struck with a mallet through a high arch of iron, which he that can do at the fewest blows, or at the number agreed upon, wins." It is to be observed, that there are two of these arches, that is, "one at either end of the alley." The game of mall was a fashionable amusement in the reign of Charles II, and the walk in St. James's Park, now called the Mall, received its name from having been appropriated to the purpose of playing at mall, where Charles himself and his courtiers frequently exercised themselves in the practice of this pastime. The denomination mall given to the game, is evidently derived from the mallet or wooden hammer used by the players to strike the ball.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 103
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Croquet

Quotes , Exercises , Game , Fashion

“There is no doubt that to-day feeling in totalitarian countries is, or they would like it to be, one of contempt for democracy. Whether it is the feeling of the fox which has lost its brush for his brother who has not I do not know, but it exists. Coupled with that is the idea that a democracy qua democracy must be a kind of decadent country in which there is no order, where industrial trouble is the order of the day, and where the people can never keep to a fixed purpose. There is a great deal that is ridiculous in that, but it is a dangerous belief for any country to have of another. There is in the world another feeling. I think you will find this in America, in France, and throughout all our Dominions. It is a sympathy with, and an admiration for, this country in the way she came through the great storm, the blizzard, some years ago, and the way in which she is progressing, as they believe, with so little industrial strife. They feel that that is a great thing which marks off our country from other countries to-day. Except for those who love industrial strife for its own sake, and they are but a few, it indeed is the greatest testimony to my mind that democracy is really functioning when her children can see her through these difficulties, some of which are very real, and settle them—a far harder thing than to fight.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1937/may/05/supply in the House of Commons (5 May 1937).
1937

Love , Children , People , World

“It is the glory and happiness of our excellent constitution, that to prevent any injustice no man is to be concluded by the first judgment; but that if he apprehends himself to be aggrieved, he has another Court to which he can resort for relief; for this purpose the law furnishes him with appeals, with writs of error and false judgment.”

John Pratt (1657–1725) English judge and politician

King v. Chancellor, &c, of the University of Cambridge (1720), 1 Str. Rep. 564.

Law , Error , Falseness , Happiness

“In the subjectivist view, when ‘reason’ is used to connote a thing or idea rather than an act, it refers exclusively to the relation of such an object or concept to a purpose, not to the object or concept itself. It means that the thing or the idea is good for something else. There is no reasonable aim as such, and to discuss the superiority of one aim over another in terms of reason becomes meaningless. From the subjective approach, such a discussion is possible only if both aims serve a third and higher one, that is, if they are means, not ends.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 6.

Idea

“It is improper, to expressly pursue the Urlinie in performance and to single out its tones… for the purpose of communicating the Urlinie to the listener." Rather, "for the performer, the Urlinie provides, first of all, a sense of direction. It serves a somewhat equivalent function to that which a road map serves for a mountain climber.”

Heinrich Schenker (1868–1935) Austrian music theorist

Das Meisterwerk I, p. 196. Translated by Kalib, vol. 2, p. 147. Quoted in Burkhart, Charles (1983). "Schenker's Theory of Levels and Musical Performance", Aspects of Schenkerian Theory, Beach David, ed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Mountain , Communication , Sense

“They tell us of the fixed laws of nature! but who dares maintain that He who fixed these laws cannot use them for the purpose of answering His people's prayers?”

William Mackergo Taylor (1829–1895) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 473.

People , Law , Nature

“In science men have learned consciously to subordinate themselves to a common purpose without losing the individuality of their achievements. Each one knows that his work depends on that of his predecessors and colleagues, and that it can only reach its fruition through the work of his successors. In science men collaborate not because they are forced to by superior authority or because they blindly follow some chosen leader, but because they realize that only in this willing collaboration can each man find his goal.”

John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971) British scientist

Source: The Social Function of Science (1939), p. 415-416. Chapter XVI. THE SOCIAL FUNCTION OF SCIENCE. The Transformation of Science

Men , Learning , Science , Dependency

“For Pollock, the fact that […] have written about Ayodhya, Mount Meru, Ganga, etc., in multiple locations is dumbfounding and irrational….. I propose a different interpretation of the same data. As per our tradition, the conceptual space of Hindus can be replicated and localized easily. The Hindu metaphysics of immanence leads to the decentralization of sacred geography…. This is why people in south India substitute their local rivers for Ganga for ritualist purposes; there is a town called Ayodhya in Thailand; the cognitive landscape of people in Java started to include Mount Meru as a local place, and so on.”

Rajiv Malhotra book The Battle for Sanskrit

The Battle for Sanskrit (2016)

People

“Some may find these conclusions frightening, and perhaps that's an appropriate reaction. But then again, maybe it’s not. For it is certainly possible to frame an ethic consistent with the Darwinian view of the world. Such an ethic might emphasize the virtue of being honest enough and courageous enough to acknowledge unflinchingly that there is probably no God, no afterlife, and no soul; that there is no objective basis to morality or higher purpose behind our suffering; that we are insignificant in a vast and impersonal cosmos; that existence is ultimately without purpose or meaning; and that the effects of our actions will ultimately fade away without trace. It is admirable to acknowledge these uncongenial truths, yet to struggle on as if life were meaningful and strive to make the world a better place anyway, without promise of eternal reward or hope of ultimate victory, and indeed for no good reason at all.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 308

Life , God , Truth , World

“Unchecked, the tourist will climb over the fence and come right into your house to take pictures of you in your habitat. Cities mindful of tourists have built elaborate “tourist traps” which, luckily, work. Tourists are kept confined to these, and few escape. There is, of course, the type known as the “intrepid tourist.” This one has to be watched carefully or he can become most annoying. Little wonder these are so often the target of terrorists. If there is an aspect of benign terror about the tourist, there is also a great deal of tourist in the terrorist. Terrorists travel with only one thing in mind, just like the tourist, and the specifics of places escape them both. Terrorists travel for the purpose of shooting unsuspecting foreigners, just as tourists travel for the purpose of shooting them with a camera.”

Andrei Codrescu (1946) American writer

“The Tourist,” Raised by Puppets (1990).

Travel , Housing

“And have no doubt, the real purpose of the Earth Summit is to transfer your hard-earned cash to others who mostly have governments with even less of a clue how to conduct their affairs than we do.”

Bernard Ingham (1932) British journalist

Article on Nuclear's Presentational Problem from the World Nuclear Association http://www.world-nuclear.org/sym/2002/ingham.htm's web site

“The purpose of teaching individualism, then, is not to make individualists but to find them. Rather, to help them find themselves. If a student takes readily to such values as the primacy of the individual, the free market place, or the immorality of taxation, he is an individualist; if he swallows hard, he must be counted a recruit for the other side.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: One is A Crowd: Reflections of An Individualist (1952), p. 3

Help

“There has been a rush of competitors anxious to be first in the field with a new text-book on the more "practical" lines which now find so much favour. The natural desire of each teacher who writes such a text-book is to give prominence to some special nostrum which he has found successful with pupils. One result is, too often, a loss of a due sense of proportion… It is, perhaps too early yet to prophesy what will be the ultimate outcome of the new order of things; but it would at least seem possible that history will repeat itself and that, when chaos has come again in geometrical teaching, there will be a return to Euclid more or less complete for the purpose of standardising it once more.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements (1908)

Books , History , Nature , Sense

“…the Assistant Secretary in Charge of Administration (was) a job which should be undertaken only by a saint or a fool…the House and Senate subcommittees in charge of appropriations, their chairmen, and the Comptroller General's office make this job a perfect hell. Like an ill-tempered chatelaine of a medieval manor, her keys hanging from her belt, Congress parsimoniously and suspiciously doles out supplies for the shortest time, each item meticulously weighed and measured, each request at first harshly denied. Almost simultaneously yesterday's accounting goes on amid screamed accusation and denunciation of every purpose of policy.”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), State Department Management, Leadership Perspectives

Fools , Hell , Time , Housing

“The Duke, always right in his purpose but generally wrong in his practice, had stayed at home working all the morning, thereby scandalising the strict, and had gone to church alone in the afternoon, thereby offending the social.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 20

Home

“Arafat's prospective visit to the museum recalls Anwar Sadat's visit to Yad Vashem in 1977 in the company of Menachem Begin. Sadat's visit was also a symbolic submission to the Zionization of the holocaust and to its appropriation by Israeli propagandists for their own purposes.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid.
On the PLO

“My purpose is, by Gods assistance, to set forth the Art of painting, as in old times it hath begun, as it was promoted, as it came to that wonderfull perfection mentioned in ancient Authors. The first booke toucheth the first beginnings of Picture. The second booke propoundeth diverse meanes tending to the advancement of this Art. The third booke speaketh of the maine grounds of Art, the which being well observed by the old Artificers, made them come neerer to the height of perfection.”

Franciscus Junius (the younger)

[The painting of the ancients, in three bookes, London, Printed by R. Hodgkinsonne, 1638, 1–2, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=gri.ark:/13960/t7hq5gq92;view=1up;seq=13]

God , Books , Art , Time

“As Prince Bismarck, in the ’60s, wanted to move the “Acheron” of socialism, … it was of course not love for socialism or knowledge of socialism that led Prince Bismarck to do this. He understood nothing about socialism at that time, and never did understand anything about it down to his death; in fact, he never had any conception of the moving forces of political and social life at all. There probably never lived at any time in any country a “statesman” who was less scientific, who had less knowledge, and who relied so purely on experience and a sort of half-gambler, half-peddler cunning, as Bismarck. Those offers to socialists place in the clearest light the untruthfulness of Prince Bismarck’s claim that he always regarded the social democracy as incompatible with the existence of the state. Bismarck wanted to use socialism for the purpose of breaking up and dissolving the bourgeois liberal opposition, especially the Progressive party. This, in itself, is the most conclusive proof that he had no conception of the real nature of socialism. Of course the fate of the boy magician was repeated. The elemental force which was conjured up grew over the head of the dabbler, and he did not get the best of socialism; socialism got the best of him.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Love , Life , Death , Fate

“e) the phrase, if I may quote, (1) “and for such other purposes as may be hereafter directed by the President” under Section 8 of Presidential Decree No. 910 and (2) “to finance the priority infrastructures development projects” under Section 12 of Presidential Decree No. 1869, as amended by Presidential Decree No. 1993, for both failing the sufficiency of standard test in violation of the principle of non-delegability of legislative power.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

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

Quotes

“People of America: the world is following your news in regards to your invasion of Iraq, for people have recently come to know that, after several years of tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven't made a move worth mentioning.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

"New OBL Tape: Iraq, Democratic Control" ABC News (7 September 2007) http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/09/new-obl-tape-ir.html.
2000s, 2004, 2004 Video Broadcast on Al-Jazeera October 29

War , People , World

“Not only have we radically abandoned the motive fully developed according to its determined and, therefore, artificial equilibrium, but we suddenly and purposely intersect each motif with one or more other motifs of which we never give the full development but merely the initial, central, of final notes... We thus arrived at what we call the painting of states of mind.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

Source: 1912, Les exposants au public', 1912, p. 8.

Motivation , Painting

“In brief, for the United States, Eurasian geostrategy involves the purposeful management of geostrategically dynamic states and the careful handling of geopolitically catalytic states, in keeping with the twin interests of America in the short-term: preservation of its unique global power and in the long-run transformation of it into increasingly institutionalized global cooperation. To put it in a terminology that hearkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński book The Grand Chessboard

Source: The Grand Chessboard (1997), Chapter 2, The Eurasian Chessboard, p. 40.

Age , Dependency

“And for the greatest movie artists where there is a unity of technique and subject, one doesn’t need to talk about technique much because it has been subsumed in the art. One doesn’t want to talk about how Tolstoi got his effects but about the work itself. One doesn’t want to talk about how Jean Renoir does it; one wants to talk about what he has done. One can try to separate it all out, of course, distinguish form and content for purposes of analysis. But that is a secondary, analytic function, a scholarly function, and hardly needs to be done explicitly in criticism. Taking it apart is far less important than trying to see it whole. The critic shouldn’t need to tear a work apart to demonstrate that he knows how it was put together. The important thing is to convey what is new and beautiful in the work, not how it was made — which is more or less implicit.”

Pauline Kael book Going Steady

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

Beauty , Art , Tear

“What happens in the case of a constructive psychic energy when it [the inner self] is purposely denied aggressive outlets? It finds out... How strong and potent is the energy that is at its command?… It is quite necessary that all these questions be answered, for the inner self is composed of energy, and in other fields of activity thoughts and emotions are instantaneously translated, their results instantly seen. There is no saving time lag.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 280
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 6

Question , Strong , Time

“Consider what kind of authority [can be ascribed to] any principle which it open to us to choose to regard as authoritative or not. I may choose for example to observe a regimen of asceticism and fasting … for reasons of health … What authority such principles possess derives from the reasons for my choice. Insofar as they are good reasons, the principles have corresponding authority; insofar as they are not, the principles are to that same extent deprived of authority. It would follow that a principle for the choice of which no reasons could be given would be a principle devoid of authority. I might indeed adopt such a principle from whim or caprice or from some arbitrary purpose … but if I then chose to abandon the principle whenever it suited me, I would be entirely free to do so.”

Alasdair MacIntyre book After Virtue

Source: After Virtue (1981), p. 42.

Health

“The dominant concept in Aristotle's philosophy of nature is his notion of causation. …The final cause states that each substance has an inherent purpose. Thus there must be a purpose or design in the acorn such that it always grows into an oak tree. This aspect of existence is indicated by the word entelechy; this means the purpose that guides things to develop in one way rather than another.”

John Freely (1926–2017) American physicist

Source: Before Galileo, The Birth of Modern Science in Medieval Europe (2012), p. 291

Way , Nature , Tree

“The purpose of studying Buddhism is not to study Buddhism but to study ourselves. You are not your body. You are the Big Activity. You are just expressing the smallest particle of the Big Activity. That is all. But when you become attached to a temporal expression of the Big Activity, it is time to talk about Buddhism.”

Shunryu Suzuki book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Part 3, No. 3 "Study Yourself"
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (1973)

Study , Time

“Considering how readily musicologists criticize one another – witness the merciless footnotes (and reviews) of so many books and articles – the innocent bystander must find it strange that they remain unwilling to venture judgments about the quality of the music around which they work…But it is hard to see what can be the purpose of musicology if not to advise people on what to hear and how to hear it. Separating out the good, the bad and the indifferent, and helping listeners enjoy the best, is surely the least we can offer society in return for our keep.”

Daniel Leech-Wilkinson British musicoloigst

Daniel Leech-Wilkinson (1997), "The good, the bad and the boring", Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198165404.

People , Books , Music , Help

“The true purpose of the strong is to promote greater strength in the weak, and not to keep the weak in that state where they are at the mercy of the strong.”

Christian D. Larson (1874–1962) Prolific author of metaphysical and New Thought books

Source: Your Forces and How to Use Them (1912), Chapter 14, p. 210

Strong

“A severe morality holds that intercourse (and may hold this of eating, too) has something wrong about it if it is ever done except explicitly as being required for that preservation of human life which is what makes intercourse a good kind of action. But this involves thoroughly faulty moral psychology. God gave us our physical appetite, and its arousal without our calculation is part of the working of our sort of life. Given moderation and right circumstances, acts prompted by inclination can be taken in a general way to accomplish what makes them good in kind and there's no need for them to be individually necessary or useful for the end that makes them good kinds of action. Intercourse is a normal part of married life through the whole life of the partners in a marriage and is normally engaged in without any distinct purpose other than to have it, just as such a part of married life.”

G. E. M. Anscombe (1919–2001) British analytic philosopher

Contraception and Chastity (1975)

Life , God , Marriage , Way

“The question, "What is the purpose thereof?" cannot be asked about anything which is not the product of an agent; therefore we cannot ask what is the purpose of the existence of God.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.13

God , Question

“It may be remarked incidentally that the recognition of the relational character of scientific objects completely eliminates an old metaphysical issue. One of the outstanding problems created by the rise of modern science was due to the fact that scientific definitions and descriptions are framed in terms of which qualities play no part. Qualities were wholly superfluous. As long as the idea persisted (an inheritance from Greek metaphysical science) that the business of knowledge is to penetrate into the inner being of objects, the existence of qualities like colors, sounds, etc., was embarrassing. The usual way of dealing with them is to declare that they are merely subjective, existing only in the consciousness of individual knowers. Given the old idea that the purpose of knowledge (represented at its best in science) is to penetrate into the heart of reality and reveal its "true" nature, the conclusion was a logical one. …The discovery of the nonscientific because of the empirically unverifiable and unnecessary character of absolute space, absolute motion, and absolute time gave the final coup de grâce to the traditional idea that solidity, mass, size, etc., are inherent possessions of ultimate individuals.”

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

Time and Individuality (1940)

Color , Way , Idea , Business

“He was the more surprised to see that Sumner invited a renewal of old relations. He found himself treated almost confidentially. Not only was he asked to make a fourth at Sumner's pleasant little dinners in the house on La Fayette Square, but he found himself admitted to the Senator's study and informed of his views, policy and purposes, which were sometimes even more astounding than his curious gaps or lapses of omniscience.

On the whole, the relation was the queerest that Henry Adams ever kept up. He liked and admired Sumner, but thought his mind a pathological study. At times he inclined to think that Sumner felt his solitude, and, in the political wilderness, craved educated society; but this hardly told the whole story. Sumner's mind had reached the calm of water which receives and reflects images without absorbing them; it contained nothing but itself.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Education , Thinking , Solitude , Study

“But in adversity, intelligence alone cannot sustain hope. Ultimately, hope can be sustained only by finding purpose in adversity, by imposing a pattern on the fortuitous disasters of existence. Human beings, if force to it, will compromise their intelligence to preserve their hope.”

Edmund Cooper book Seed of Light

Seed of Light (1959)

Hope , Intelligence

“The two great conceptual revolutions of twentieth-century science, the overturning of classical physics by Werner Heisenberg and the overturning of the foundations of mathematics by Kurt Gödel, occurred within six years of each other within the narrow boundaries of German-speaking Europe. … A study of the historical background of German intellectual life in the 1920s reveals strong links between them. Physicists and mathematicians were exposed simultaneously to external influences that pushed them along parallel paths. … Two people who came early and strongly under the influence of Spengler's philosophy were the mathematician Hermann Weyl and the physicist Erwin Schrödinger. … Weyl and Schrödinger agreed with Spengler that the coming revolution would sweep away the principle of physical causality. The erstwhile revolutionaries David Hilbert and Albert Einstein found themselves in the unaccustomed role of defenders of the status quo, Hilbert defending the primacy of formal logic in the foundations of mathematics, Einstein defending the primacy of causality in physics. In the short run, Hilbert and Einstein were defeated and the Spenglerian ideology of revolution triumphed, both in physics and in mathematics. Heisenberg discovered the true limits of causality in atomic processes, and Gödel discovered the limits of formal deduction and proof in mathematics. And, as often happens in the history of intellectual revolutions, the achievement of revolutionary goals destroyed the revolutionary ideology that gave them birth. The visions of Spengler, having served their purpose, rapidly became irrelevant.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

Life , People , History , Mathematics

“Up and down the the still sparsely settled coast of British North America, groups of men-intellectuals and farmers, scholars and merchants, the learned and the ignorant-gathered for the purpose of constructing enlightened governments.”

Bernard Bailyn book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), Chapter VI, THE CONTAGION OF LIBERTY, p. 231.

Men , Learning

“The importance of the lesson which this Society was formed to teach would be hard to overestimate. Its main purpose is to impress upon the people the necessity for reverence. This is the beginning of a proper conception of ourselves, of our relationship to each other, and our relationship to our Creator. Human nature cannot develop very far without it. The mind does not unfold, the creative faculty does not mature, the spirit does not expand, save under the influence of reverence. It is the chief motive of an obedience. It is only by a correct attitude of mind begun early in youth and carried through maturity that these desired results are likely to be secured. It is along the path of reverence and obedience that the race has reached the goal of freedom, of self-government, of a higher morality, and a more abundant spiritual life.”

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

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Life , People , Youth , Motivation

“First, how do you prove that mankind is invested with the right of killing them, and that brutes have been created for the purpose you assert them to be? Secondly, it is to be observed that the flesh of man himself possesses the same nourishing and palatable qualities? And are we then to become cannibals for that reason?”

Lewis Gompertz (1783–1861) Early animal rights activist

Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes, edited by Peter Singer (Fontwell: Centaur Press, 1992), p. 84.

“It is this diffused spirit of Christianity rather than the conscious purpose of organized Christianity which has been the chief moral force in social changes. It has often taken its finest form in heretics and free-thinkers, and in non-Christian movements. The Church has often been indifferent or hostile to the effects which it had itself produced. The mother has refused to acknowledge her own children.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 150

Hostility , Children , Change , Indifference

“Perhaps the greatest change that industrialism (along with Protestantism and rationalism) has made in daily life is to separate work from leisure in a radical and almost absolute way. Once the efficacy of work began to be more clearly and fully appreciated, work had to become more efficacious in itself — that is, more efficient. To this end, it had to be more sharply separated from everything that was not work; it had to be made more concentratedly and purely itself — in attitude, in method and, above all, in time. Moreover, under the rule of efficiency, seriously purposeful activity in general tended to become assimilated to work. The effect of all this has been to reduce leisure to an occasion more exclusively of passivity, to a breathing spell and interlude; it has become something peripheral.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

"The Plight of Culture" (1953), p. 31
1960s, Art and Culture: Critical Essays, (1961)

Life , Way , Change , Time

“Chorus: O suitably attired in leather boots
Head of a traveller, wherefore seeking whom
Whence by what way how purposed art thou come
To this well-nightingaled vicinity?
My object in inquiring is to know.
But if you happen to be deaf and dumb
And do not understand a word I say,
Nod with your hand to signify as much.
Alcmaeon: I journeyed hither a Boeotian road.
Chorus: Sailing on horseback or with feet for oars?
Alcmaeon: Plying by turns my partnership of legs.
Chorus: Beneath a shining or a rainy Zeus?
Alcmaeon: Mud's sister, not himself, adorns my shoes.
Chorus: To learn your name would not displease me much.
Alcmaeon: Not all that men desire do they attain.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

"Fragment of a Greek Tragedy". This parody was first written in 1883, but quoted here from a revised version of 1927.

Men , Art , Shoe , Way

“The classification of a system as complex or simple will depend upon the observer of the system and upon the purpose he has for considering the system.”

Mike Jackson (1951) systems scientist

As cited in: Joseph E. Kasser (2010) " Seven systems engineering myths and the corresponding realities http://www.synergio.nl/media/59286/7_myths_of_se.pdf"
Towards a System of Systems Methodologies (1984)

Dependency

“You can throw yourselves away. You can become of no use in the universe except for a warning. You can lose your souls. Oh, what a loss is that! The perversion and degradation of every high and immortal power for an eternity! And shall this be true of any one of you? Will you be lost when One has come from heaven, traveling in the greatness of His strength, and with garments dyed in blood, on purpose to guide you home—. home to a Father's house — to an eternal home?”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 560.

Travel , Home , Soul , Universe

“Let us imagine that from any given point the system of shortest lines going out from it is constructed; the position of an arbitrary point may then be determined by the initial direction of the geodesic in which it lies, and by its distance measured along that line from the origin. It can therefore be expressed in terms of the ratios dx0 of the quantities dx in this geodesic, and of the length s of this line. …the square of the line-element is \sum (dx)^2 for infinitesimal values of the x, but the term of next order in it is equal to a homogeneous function of the second order… an infinitesimal, therefore, of the fourth order; so that we obtain a finite quantity on dividing this by the square of the infinitesimal triangle, whose vertices are (0,0,0,…), (x1, x2, x3,…), (dx1, dx2, dx3,…). This quantity retains the same value so long as… the two geodesics from 0 to x and from 0 to dx remain in the same surface-element; it depends therefore only on place and direction. It is obviously zero when the manifold represented is flat, i. e., when the squared line-element is reducible to \sum (dx)^2, and may therefore be regarded as the measure of the deviation of the manifoldness from flatness at the given point in the given surface-direction. Multiplied by -¾ it becomes equal to the quantity which Privy Councillor Gauss has called the total curvature of a surface. …The measure-relations of a manifoldness in which the line-element is the square root of a quadric differential may be expressed in a manner wholly independent of the choice of independent variables. A method entirely similar may for this purpose be applied also to the manifoldness in which the line-element has a less simple expression, e. g., the fourth root of a quartic differential. In this case the line-element, generally speaking, is no longer reducible to the form of the square root of a sum of squares, and therefore the deviation from flatness in the squared line-element is an infinitesimal of the second order, while in those manifoldnesses it was of the fourth order. This property of the last-named continua may thus be called flatness of the smallest parts. The most important property of these continua for our present purpose, for whose sake alone they are here investigated, is that the relations of the twofold ones may be geometrically represented by surfaces, and of the morefold ones may be reduced to those of the surfaces included in them…”

Bernhard Riemann (1826–1866) German mathematician

On the Hypotheses which lie at the Bases of Geometry (1873)

Imagination , Parting , Dependency

“They foresaw that the concession of a Providence would impose an eternal yoke upon their necks, by making them accountable for all they did to a higher tribunal, so that they must necessarily 'pass the time of their sojourning here in fear', while all their thoughts, words and ways were strictly noted and recorded, for the purpose of an account by an all-seeing and righteous God. They therefore laboured to persuade themselves that what they had no mind for did not exist.”

John Flavel (1627–1691) English Presbyterian clergyman

The Mystery of Providence

God , Fear , Way , Time

“God has been always working, evolving, in His quiet power, from the seeming, the real, from the false, the true. Not for nothing blazed the martyr's fires — not for nothing toiled brave sufferers up successive hills of shame. God's purpose doth not languish. The torture and the trial of the past have been the stern ploughers in His service who never suspended their husbandry, and who have made long their furrows. Into those furrows the imperishable seed hath fallen. The heedless world hath trodden it in; tears and blood have watered it; the patient sun hath warmed and cheered it to its ripening; and it shall be ready soon.”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 216.

God , World , Tear , Suffering

“Progress … has subordinated the purpose of life to the means of subsistence and turned us into the nuts and bolts for our tools.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

“In these great times,” Harry Zohn, trans., In These Great Times (Montreal: 1976), pp. 73-74

Life

“Every day you must stay true to your purpose, despite snow or rain. When your purpose is clear, your life will have meaning.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

Life

“What security have you for your own safety if every man of vile temper, of low instincts, of base purpose, can find in his own heart a higher law than that which is the rule of society, the Constitution, and the Bible? These higher-law preachers should be tarred and feathered, and whipped by those they have thus instigated. This, my friends, is what was called in good old revolutionary times, Lynch Law. It is sometimes the very best law, because it deals summary justice upon those who would otherwise escape from all other kinds of punishment.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Speech in New York, 1858.
1850s

Justice , Law , Time , Heart

“.. it was with the utmost reluctance that I found the figure could not serve my purposes… But a time came when none of us could use the figure without mutilating it. [his quote in 1959, looking back to the 1930's]”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

As quoted in Abstract Expressionism, Davind Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 143
1950's

Quotes , Time

“My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.”

Bette Davis (1908–1989) film and television actress from the United States

Lorraine A. Darconte, Pride Matters: Quotes to Inspire Your Personal Best, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2001, ISBN 0740718835, p. 56.
Attributed

Passion

“The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than to win. The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

A Manual on the Dissemination of Material (1955).

Law

“I believe we have this enormous brains with the ability to process so much information for a purpose – because we were made in God's image, not in the image of an amoeba.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 130

God

“Referring to a professor aboard ship: This passenger — the first and only one we had had, except to go from port to port on the coast — was no one else than a gentleman whom I had known in my smoother days, and the last person I should have expected to see on the coast of California — Professor Nuttall of Cambridge. I had left him quietly seated in the chair of the Botany and Ornithology Department at Harvard University, and the next I saw of him, he was strolling about San Diego beach, in a sailors' pea jacket, with a wide straw hat, and barefooted, with his trousers rolled up to his knees, picking up stones and shells… I was often amused to see the sailors puzzled to know what to make of him, and to hear their conjectures about him and his business… The Pilgrim's crew called Mr. Nuttall "Old Curious," from his zeal for curiosities; and some of them said that he was crazy, and that his friends let him go about and amuse himself this way. Why else would (he)… come to such a place as California to pick up shells and stones, they could not understand. One of them, however, who had seen something more of the world ashore said, "Oh, 'vast there!… I've seen them colleges and know the ropes. They keep all such things for cur'osities, and study 'em, and have men a purpose to go and get 'em… He'll carry all these things to the college, and if they are better than any that they have had before, he'll be head of the college. Then, by and by, somebody else will go after some more, and if they beat him he'll have to go again, or else give up his berth. That's the way they do it. This old covery knows the ropes. He has worked a traverse over 'em, and come 'way out here where nobody's ever been afore, and where they'll never think of coming."”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. book Two Years Before the Mast

This explanation satisfied Jack; and as it raised Mr. Nuttall's credit, and was near enough to the truth for common purposes, I did not disturb it.
Source: Two Years Before the Mast (1840), p. 267

Men , Truth , World , Way

“I must here acknowledge that the best naturall philosophic that I ever coulde learn in this point, was neither out of Aristotle's Physicks, nor Velcurie's Naturall Philosophy, nor garseous meteors, nor out of any of the olde philosophicall fathers, that writ so many hundred years past; but that little which I have, I gathered it on the backside of Moore fieldes, where, by sundrie undoubted argument, I did heare it maintained, that all the elementes doo onely differ in attenuation and condensation: so as earth beeing attenuated becommeth water; and water condensate, becommeth earth; water attenuated becommeth aier, and aier condensate becommeth water; and so likewise aier attenuated becommeth fire, and fire condensate becommeth aier; and thus all of them spring from one roote, which being admitted is a manifeste proofe that there is a greate and neere affinity betweene the lande and the sea, wherein we shall finde salte water enough for our purpose.”

Hugh Plat (1552–1608) writer

As cited in: Robert Kemp Philp (1859, p. 74)
The Jewell House of Art and Nature, 1594

Spring , Learning , Water , Bee

“Otherwise lacking internal support or external legitimacy, the US empire now banks on a pedigree of comprador intellectuals, homeless minds and guns for hire. All this to momentarily manufacture consent, to secure a selective memory, and to sustain a far more enduring collective amnesia that may perhaps serve immediate US imperial purposes well, but will ipso facto sustain its self-destructive force of building fictive sand castles near the factual waves of history. This empire will not last. No empire does. If empires lasted, the whole world would be speaking ancient Persian today.”

Hamid Dabashi (1951) American academic

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/797/special.htm Native informers and the making of the American empire

World , History , Support , Memory

“The 'dominion of capital' is an accomplished teleological catastrophe, robot rebellion, or shoggothic insurgency, through which intensively escalating instrumentality has inverted all natural purposes into a monstrous reign of the tool.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Teleoplexy: Notes on Acceleration" (2014), in #Accelerate: The Accelerationist Reader, p. 513

Nature

“How we come to have the world-views we do is an interesting question. No doubt reason plays a part, but human needs for meaning and purpose are usually more important. At times personal taste may be what decides the issue. There is nothing to say that, when all the work of reason is done, only one view of the world will remain. There may be many that fit everything that can be known. In that case you might as well choose the view of the world you find most interesting or beautiful. Adopting a world-view is more like selecting a painting to furnish a room than testing a scientific theory. The test is how it fits with your life.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

Freedom for Über-Marionettes: What Science Won't Tell You (p. 150)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

Life , World , Beauty , Question

“Here is a list of some of the questions and their short answers (…) The interesting thing is to recognize how totally unavoidable they are, provided you place your confidence in science to provide the answers
Is there a God? No.
What is the nature of reality? What physics says it is.
What is the purpose of the universe? There is none.
What is the meaning of life? Ditto.
Why am I here? Just dumb luck.
Does prayer work? Of course not.
Is there a soul? Is it immortal? Are you kidding?
Is there free will? Not a chance!
What happens when we die? Everything pretty much goes on as before, except us.
What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There is no moral difference between them.
Why should I be moral? Because it makes you feel better than being immoral.
Is abortion, euthanasia, suicide, paying taxes, foreign aid, or anything else you don't like forbidden, permissible, or sometimes obligatory? Anything goes.
What is love, and how can I find it? Love is the solution to a strategic interaction problem. Don't look for it; it will find you when you need it.
Does history have any meaning or purpose? It's full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing.
Does the human past have any lessons for our future? Fewer and fewer, if it ever had any to begin with.”

Alexander Rosenberg (1946) American philosopher

The Atheist's Guide to Reality (2011)

Love , Life , God , Feeling

“The aim of the Nazis was to enslave all the peoples, who were to be the mere instruments of the Germans, the Herrenfolk, the master class. To that we opposed the democratic ideal, whereby we saw the world as a community of nations, differing in their qualities but united in a comity of nations, like the citizens of a town, but recognizing each other's rights and uniting for common purposes.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Chesterfield (13 June 1941), quoted in The Times (14 June 1941), p. 2.
1940s

People , World , Communication

“Paris, 30-7-1843, h. Daumier - I, the undersigned, Honoré Daumier declare to reduce the price of my drawings in lithography, to forty francs the drawing with the condition
1st, that the first 11 stones which I will deliver to 'Charivari' will be paid to me at the old price, that is, fifty francs each.
2° that this reduction will be made to me as long as M Dutacy remains attached to the...'Charivari'; this having been made for the sole purpose of being agreeable to him.”

Honoré Daumier (1808–1879) French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor

Quote in a handwritten letter, by Daumier, 30 June, 1843; confirming his agreement with Philipon; from website Daumier http://www.daumier.org/14.0.html#c760
40 Francs for each lithograph; this is one of the few documents, showing the income which Daumier drew from his artistic activity. With this salary he would be able to support a family of four
1840's

Drawing

“What we need, then, is a new 'paradigm' - a new vision of reality; a fundamental change in our thoughts, perceptions, and values. The beginnings of this change, of the shift from the mechanistic to the holistic conception of reality, are already visible in all fields and are likely to dominate the present decade. The various manifestations and implications of this 'paradigm shift' are the subject of this book. The sixties and seventies have generated a whole series of social movements that all seem to go in the same direction, emphasizing different aspects of the new vision of reality. So far, most of these movements still operate separately and have not yet recognized how their intentions interrelate. The purpose of this book is to provide a coherent conceptual framework that will help them recognize the communality of their aims. Once this happens, we can expect the various movements to flow together and form a powerful force for social change. The gravity and global extent of our current crisis indicate that this change is likely to result in a transformation of unprecedented dimensions, a turning point for the planet as a whole.”

Fritjof Capra book The Turning Point

Preface.
The Turning Point (1982)

Books , Communication , Reality , Change

“If time is treated in modern physics as a dimension on a par with the dimensions of space, why should we a priori exclude the possibility that we are pulled as well as pushed along its axis? The future has, after all, as much or as little reality as the past, and there is nothing logically inconceivable in introducing, as a working hypothesis, an element of finality, supplementary to the element of causality, into our equations. It betrays a great lack of imagination to believe that the concept of "purpose" must necessarily be associated with some anthropomorphic deity.”

Arthur Koestler (1905–1983) Hungarian-British author and journalist

Epilogue
The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe (1959)

Imagination , Reality , Time , Past

“The ultimate goal is not life. It is resurrection. The resurrection of nations in the name of Jesus Christ the Savior. Creation and culture are only means--not the purpose--of resurrection. Culture is the fruit of talent, which God implanted in our nation and for which we are responsible. A time will come when all the world's nations will arise from the dead, with all their dead, with all their kings and emperors. Every nation has its place before God's throne. That final moment, "resurrection from the dead," is the highest and most sublime goal for which a nation can strive. The nation is thus an entity that lives even beyond this earth. Nations are realities also in the other world, not only on this one. To us Rumanians, to our nation, as to every nation in the world, God assigned a specific mission; God has given us a historical destiny. The first law that every nation must abide by is that of attaining that destiny, of fulfilling the mission entrusted to it.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Nation and Culture

Life , God , World , Law

“The dissatisfaction with life and the world, felt more or less in the present state of society and intellect by every discerning and highly conscientious mind, gave in his case a rather melancholy tinge to the character, very natural to those whose passive moral susceptibilities are more than proportioned to their active energies. For it must be said, that the strength of will of which his manner seemed to give such strong assurance, expended itself principally in manner. With great zeal for human improvement, a strong sense of duty and capacities and acquirements the extent of which is proved by the writings he has left, he hardly ever completed any intellectual task of magnitude. He had so high a standard of what ought to be done, so exaggerated a sense of deficiencies in his own performances, and was so unable to content himself with the amount of elaboration sufficient for the occasion and the purpose, that he not only spoilt much of his work for ordinary use by over-labouring it, but spent so much time and exertion in superfluous study and thought, that when his task ought to have been completed, he had generally worked himself into an illness, without having half finished what he undertook. From this mental infirmity (of which he is not the sole example among the accomplished and able men whom I have known), combined with liability to frequent attacks of disabling though not dangerous ill-health, he accomplished, through life, little in comparison with what he seemed capable of;”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/74/mode/1up pp. 74-75

Men , Nature , Study , Health

“[ Diversification strategy is] a firm’s commitment to diversity per se, together with the strengths, skills or purposes that span this diversity, shown by the way in which business activities are related one to another.”

Richard Rumelt (1942) American economist

Source: Strategy, structure, and economic performance. (1974), p. 29

Way , Business

“The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to place their entire life in the hands of some other person. For this purpose they frequently choose someone who doesn’t even want the beastly thing.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 16

Life , Personality

“If it were not my purpose to combine foreign things with things Greek, to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of Greek justice and peace over every nation, I should not content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Greeks should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos…”

Plutarch book Moralia

On the Fortune of Alexander, I, 332A Loeb, F.C Babbitt
Moralia, Others

Family , Peace , Justice , Search

“In the presence of the total reality upon which our conduct is founded, our knowledge is characterized by peculiar limitations and aberrations. We cannot say in principle that "error is life and knowledge is death," because a being involved in persistent errors would continually act wide of the purpose, and would thus inevitably perish.”

Georg Simmel (1858–1918) German sociologist, philosopher, and critic

Source: The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies (1906), p. 444

Life , Death , Error , Knowledge

“WE have placed our psychotechnical interest at the service of economic tasks… The purpose before us was to find for every economic occupation the best-fitted personality, both in the interest of economic success and in the interest of personal development.”

Hugo Munsterberg (1863–1916) German-American psychologist, philosopher and agitator

Source: Psychology and Industrial Efficiency (1913), p. 141

Success , Personality

“God, when he created the human species, wished their happiness; and made for them the provision which he has made, with that view, and for that purpose.”

William Paley (1743–1805) Christian apologist, natural theologian, utilitarian

Vol. I, Book II, Ch. V.
The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785)

God , Happiness

“The United Nations is an organization of extraordinary potential. As the United Nations rebuilds its headquarters, it must also open the door to a new age of transparency, accountability, and seriousness of purpose. With determination and clear purpose, the United Nations can be a powerful force for good as we head into the 21st century. It can affirm the great promise of its founding.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)

Age

“[Y]ou are what you are because of somebody else. You are what you are because of the grace of the Almighty God. He who seeks to find his ego will lose it. But he who loses his ego in some great cause, some great purpose, some great ideal, some great loyalty, he who discovers, somehow, that he stands where he stands because of the forces of history and because of other individuals; he who discovers that he stands where he stands because of the grace of God, finds himself. He loses himself in that something but later finds himself. And this is the way, it seems to me, to the integrated personality.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)

God , Way , History , Personality

“Gentlemen on this floor and in the Senate, had repeatedly, during this discussion, asserted that slavery was a moral, political, and personal blessing; that the slave was free from care, contented, happy, fat, and sleek. Comparisons have been instituted between slaves and laboring freemen, much to the advantage of the condition of slavery. Instances are cited where the slave, having tried freedom, had voluntarily returned to resume his yoke. Well, if this be so, let us give all a chance to enjoy this blessing. Let the slaves, who choose, go free; and the free, who choose, become slaves. If these gentlemen believe there is a word of truth in what they preach, the slaveholder need be under no apprehension that he will ever lack bondsmen. Their slaves would remain, and many freemen would seek admission into this happy condition. Let them be active in propagating their principles. We will not complain if they establish Societies in the South for that purpose -- abolition societies to abolish freedom. Nor will we rob the mails to search for incendiary publications in favor of slavery, even if they contain seductive pictures, and cuts of those implements of happiness -- handcuffs, iron yokes and cat-o'-nine tails.”

Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868) American politician

In Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens

Truth , Search , Cats , Freedom

“All men are our brothers. As far as the discovery of the truth is concerned, they are all working for the same purpose; they may be separated by the accidents of space and time, and by the exigencies of race, religion, nationality, and other groupings; from the point of view of eternity they are working together.”

George Sarton (1884–1956) American historian of science

Preface.
A History of Science Vol.2 Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C. (1959)

Men , Truth , Religion , Time

“I am an old man!… I’m given to meditation and prayer. I would enjoy sitting in a rocker, swallowing prescriptions, listening to soft music, and contemplating the things of the universe. But such activity offers no challenge and makes no contribution. I wish to be up and doing. I wish to face each day with resolution and purpose. I wish to use every waking hour to give encouragement, to bless those whose burdens are heavy, to build faith and strength of testimony.”

Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Testimony, Ensign, May 1998, 69.

Faith , Music , Universe

“I think of Abstract Art in the same way I think of all Art, Past and Present. I see it as divided into two Major categories, Objective and Subjective. Objective Art is Absolute Art. Subjective Art is Illustration, or communication by Symbols, Replicas, and Oblique Emotional Passes. They are both Art, but their Content has no Identity. Their difference cannot be defined as a difference of Idiom, because all Paintings have the Laws of Design as a common denominator. Design exists as an Idiom of Color-Space Logic, and it also exists in an Idiom of Representational Likenesses. Objective Art and Subjective Art exist in both Idioms. Their difference can only be defined in terms of what the Artist thinks his Purpose means-its Content as a Design Image.”

Stuart Davis (1892–1964) American painter

Source: George L. K. Morris, Willem De Kooning, Alexander Calder, Fritz Glarner, Robert Motherwell, Stuart Davis. " What Abstract Art Means to Me http://www.jstor.org/stable/4058250," in: The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art, Vol. 18, No. 3, (Spring, 1951), pp. 2-15

Law , Art , Color , Way

“I think we’re always going to have to operate as part of a multinational force. To do so, we have to understand the history and the culture of each of these conflicts and of the microconflicts in each subregion. Obviously, our multinational partners are invaluable for their perspectives, but we also need strong partnerships with indigenous leaders. As in business, we need negotiation competencies and the ability to map stakeholder interests in particular. When we’re partnering with somebody we need to understand several things: their interests, how they align with our interests, how to build relationships based on mutual trust and common purpose, and how to use those relationships to work together to accomplish the mission.”

H. R. McMaster (1962) 26th United States National Security Advisor

How militaries learn and adapt: An interview with Major General H. R. McMaster http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-sector/our-insights/how-militaries-learn-and-adapt (April 2013)

History , Understanding , Business , Thinking