Quotes about quest (290 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Well fine, then. I could send you out to win my favor. Possibly on a quest involving bringing a large mug of coffee and a doughnut. Or the wholesale slaughter of all my enemies. I haven't decided which.”

Holly Black book The Darkest Part of the Forest

Source: The Darkest Part of the Forest

Coffee

“I am a feminist. I reject wholeheartedly the way we are taught to perceive women. The beauty of women, how a woman should act or behave. Women are strong and fragile. Women are beautiful and ugly. We are soft-spoken and loud, all at once. There is something mind-controlling about the way we're taught to view women. My work, both visually and musically, is a rejection of all those things. And most importantly a quest.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

SHOWstudio Interview. In Camera with Lady Gaga 30 May 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmcxdZQCnT4&feature=PlayList&p=6DB0E6483F09B62E&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1.

Women , Beauty , Music , Way

“Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Source: Man's Search For Meaning: The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust

Life , Pleasure

“The historical Jesus will be to our time a stranger and an enigma. The study of the Life of Jesus has had a curious history. It set out in quest of the historical Jesus, believing that when it had found Him it could bring Him straight into our time as a Teacher and Savior. It loosed the bands by which He had been riveted for centuries to the stony rocks of ecclesiastical doctrine, and rejoiced to see life and movement coming into the figure once more, and the historical Jesus advancing, as it seemed, to meet it. But He does not stay; He passes by our time and returns to His own. What surprised and dismayed the theology of the last forty years was that, despite all forced and arbitrary interpretations, it could not keep Him in our time, but had to let Him go. He returned to his own time, not owing to the application of any historical ingenuity, but by the same inevitable necessity by which the liberated pendulum returns to its original position.”

Albert Schweitzer book The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Source: The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906), p. 397

Life , History , Study , Teachers

“Perhaps I have not been made for the pure, expansive waters, but for those which are small and readily accesible. And perhaps my craving for another source, which gives me the expression of someone in search of food, perhaps this craving is a whim - and nothing more. Yet surely those rare moments of self-confidence, of blind existence, of happiness as intense and serene as an organ playing - surely those moments prove that I am capable of fulfilling my quest and that this longing which consumes my whole being is not merely some whim? Moreover, that whim is the truth!”

Clarice Lispector book Near to the Wild Heart

Near to the Wild Heart (1943), p. 65

Truth , Food , Confidence , Search

“Yes, your father and Bartolo
They have fallen
And yesterday they fought and fell
But in the quest for joy and freedom
And in the struggle of this life you'll find
That there is love and sometimes more
Yes, in the struggle you will find
That you can love and be loved also

Forgive me all who are my friends
I am with you
I beg of you, do not cry”

Joan Baez (1941) American singer

"The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, Part Three"
Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)

Forgiveness , Love , Life , Freedom

“The joy of this quest is not in triumph over others, but in the search for the qualities we share with them and for our uniqueness, which raises us above all competition.”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

Quoted in The Aquarian Conspiracy, by Marilyn Ferguson, (1980)

Joy , Search

“He had been through a good deal in the course of the Great Quest — he had seen beautiful things and horrible things — but up until now he had not known that one and the same creature can be both, that beauty can be terrifying.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

Beauty

“Today will still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity's deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in.”

Stephen Hawking book A Brief History of Time

Source: A Brief History of Time

Knowledge , Universe

“A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

“Lessing, the most honest of theoretical men, dared to say that he took greater delight in the quest for truth than in the truth itself.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Birth of Tragedy

Darum hat Lessing, der ehrlichste theoretische Mensch, es auszusprechen gewagt, dass ihm mehr am Suchen der Wahrheit als an ihr selbst gelegen sei...
Source: The Birth of Tragedy (1872), p. 73

Men , Truth

“Where is my dwelling place? Where I can never stand. Where is my final goal, toward which I should ascend?
It is beyond all place. What should my quest then be? I must, transcending God, into the desert flee”

Angelus Silesius (1624–1677) German writer

As quoted in For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics (2009) by Roger Housden, p. 78

God

“Whitman’s masterpiece, his whole vision, is exactly about this: life as a quest for truth, love, beauty, goodness, and freedom; life as the art of becoming human through the cultivation of the human soul.”

Rob Riemen (1962) Dutch philosopher

Source: Nobility of Spirit : A Forgotten Ideal (2008), p. xxvii

Love , Life , Truth , Beauty

“To the Youth in Europe and North America,
The recent events in France and similar ones in some other Western countries have convinced me to directly talk to you about them. I am addressing you, [the youth], not because I overlook your parents, rather it is because the future of your nations and countries will be in your hands; and also I find that the sense of quest for truth is more vigorous and attentive in your hearts.
I don’t address your politicians and statesmen either in this writing because I believe that they have consciously separated the route of politics from the path of righteousness and truth.
I would like to talk to you about Islam, particularly the image that is presented to you as Islam. Many attempts have been made over the past two decades, almost since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, to place this great religion in the seat of a horrifying enemy. The provocation of a feeling of horror and hatred and its utilization has unfortunately a long record in the political history of the West.
Here, I don’t want to deal with the different phobias with which the Western nations have thus far been indoctrinated. A cursory review of recent critical studies of history would bring home to you the fact that the Western governments’ insincere and hypocritical treatment of other nations and cultures has been censured in new historiographies.
The histories of the United States and Europe are ashamed of slavery, embarrassed by the colonial period and chagrined at the oppression of people of color and non-Christians. Your researchers and historians are deeply ashamed of the bloodsheds wrought in the name of religion between the Catholics and Protestants or in the name of nationality and ethnicity during the First and Second World Wars. This approach is admirable.
By mentioning a fraction of this long list, I don’t want to reproach history; rather I would like you to ask your intellectuals as to why the public conscience in the West awakens and comes to its senses after a delay of several decades or centuries. Why should the revision of collective conscience apply to the distant past and not to the current problems? Why is it that attempts are made to prevent public awareness regarding an important issue such as the treatment of Islamic culture and thought?
You know well that humiliation and spreading hatred and illusionary fear of the “other” have been the common base of all those oppressive profiteers. Now, I would like you to ask yourself why the old policy of spreading “phobia” and hatred has targeted Islam and Muslims with an unprecedented intensity. Why does the power structure in the world want Islamic thought to be marginalized and remain latent? What concepts and values in Islam disturb the programs of the super powers and what interests are safeguarded in the shadow of distorting the image of Islam? Hence, my first request is: Study and research the incentives behind this widespread tarnishing of the image of Islam.
My second request is that in reaction to the flood of prejudgments and disinformation campaigns, try to gain a direct and firsthand knowledge of this religion. The right logic requires that you understand the nature and essence of what they are frightening you about and want you to keep away from.”

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

Message of Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei To the Youth in Europe and North America http://english.khamenei.ir//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2001, Khamenei.ir (January 21, 2015)
2015

War , People , Truth , Youth

“A disciple said to him, "I am ready, in the quest for God, to give up anything: wealth, friends, family, country, life itself. What else can a person give up?"
The Master calmly replied, "One's beliefs about God."”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Belief
One Minute Wisdom (1989)

Life , God , Family , Personality

“The quest for philosophical beginnings is idle, for everywhere in all beginnings we find only the crude, the unformed, the empty and the ugly. What matters in all things is the higher levels.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks

Source: Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks (posthumous), p. 30

“Our nation was founded on a bedrock principle that we are all created equal. The project of each generation is to bridge the meaning of those founding words with the realities of changing times -- a never-ending quest to ensure those words ring true for every single American. Progress on this journey often comes in small increments, sometimes two steps forward, one step back, propelled by the persistent effort of dedicated citizens. And then sometimes, there are days like this when that slow, steady effort is rewarded with justice that arrives like a thunderbolt.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Supreme Court Decision on Marriage Equality (June 2015)

Justice , Reality , Effort , Change

“I resolved from the beginning of my quest that I would not be misled by sentiment and desire into beliefs for which there was no good evidence.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Fact and Fiction (1961), Part I, Ch. 6: "The Pursuit of Truth", p. 37
1960s

“Christ said, "The Truth shall make you free," but Truth is not found once and forever. Truth is eternal, and the quest for Truth must also be eternal.”

Max Heindel book The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception

The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception

Truth , Christ

“I think we're all a bunch of weirdos on a quest to belong. The songs are echolocation up in impregnable fog.”

Aesop Rock (1976) American rapper

"Dorks" from the album The Impossible Kid.

Thinking

“None of us will become perfect in a day or a month or a year. We will not accomplish it in a lifetime, but we can begin now, starting with our more obvious weaknesses and gradually converting them to strengths as we go forward with our lives. This quest may be a long one; in fact, it will be lifelong. It may be fraught with many mistakes, with falling down and getting back up again. And it will take much effort. But we must not sell ourselves short. We must make a little extra effort. We would be wise to kneel before our God in supplication. He will help us. He will bless us. He will comfort and sustain us. He will help us to do more, and be more, than we can ever accomplish or be on our own.”

Gordon B. Hinckley book Standing for Something

Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes.

God , Effort , Help , Perfection

“The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.”

Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist

Human Options (1981)

Missing You , Loneliness

“Supposing I was to tell you that it's just Beauty that's calling me, the beauty of the far off and unknown, the mystery and spell of the East which lures me in the books I've read, the need of the freedom of great wide spaces, the joy of wandering on and on — in quest of the secret which is hidden over there, beyond the horizon?”

Eugene O'Neill Beyond the Horizon

Robert: Act 1, Scene 1
Beyond the Horizon (1918)

Secret , Books , Beauty , Freedom

“This dogma had first to be shattered before men could once more go out in quest of the historical Jesus, before they could even grasp the thought of His existence. That the historic Jesus is something different from the Jesus Christ of the doctrine of the Two Natures seems to us now self-evident. We can, at the present day, scarcely imagine the long agony in which the historical view of the life of Jesus came to birth. And even when He was once more recalled to life. He was still, like Lazarus of old, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes — the grave-clothes of the dogma of the Dual Nature.”

Albert Schweitzer book The Quest of the Historical Jesus

Source: The Quest of the Historical Jesus (1906), p. 3

Life , Men , Imagination , Birth

“We do not want our world to perish. But in our quest for knowledge, century by century, we have placed all our trust in a cold, impartial intellect which only brings us nearer to destruction. We have heeded no wisdom offering guidance. Only by learning to love one another can our world be saved. Only love can conquer all.”

Dora Russell (1894–1986) author, feminist, socialist campaigner

Challenge to the Cold War (1985) Vol. 3, Ch. 14

Love , Wisdom , World , Knowledge

“If an unlearned adventurer in his quest for political power and perpetuation brings religion down from its celestial plane to a mundane level by converting it into a narrow political ideology, the adventurer endangers the link between God and man and man and man.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928–1979) Fourth President and ninth Prime Minister of Pakistan

Source: Letter to his daughter (1978), p. 80.
Context: Religion is a link between God and man and man and man. Political ideology is a link between man and man. For this reason the great religions of the world like Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the last of all religions, have outlived and outlasted political ideologies. If an unlearned adventurer in his quest for political power and perpetuation brings religion down from its celestial plane to a mundane level by converting it into a narrow political ideology, the adventurer endangers the link between God and man and man and man.

God , Religion

“Living through the 1929 Great Depression helped shape my social conscience. During this time, I realized the earth was still the same place, manufacturing plants were still intact, and resources were still there, but people didn’t have money to buy the products. I felt the rules of the game we play by were outmoded and damaging. This began a life-long quest resulting in the conclusions and designs presented in The Venus Project.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Money , Time , Game , People

“We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is. We are searching for an ideal image of our own world: we go in quest of a planet, of a civilisation superior to our own but developed on the basis of a prototype of our primeval past. At the same time, there is something inside us which we don't like to face up to, from which we try to protect ourselves, but which nevertheless remains, since we don't leave Earth in a state of primal innocence. We arrive here as we are in reality, and when the page is turned and that reality is revealed to us — that part of our reality which we would prefer to pass over in silence — then we don't like it any more.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Solaris (1961), Ch. 6: "The Little Apocrypha", p. 72
Solaris (1961)

Time , Search , Past , Silence

“WHAT is your name? WHAT is your quest? and WHAT is your favorite color?”

Graham Chapman (1941–1989) English comedian, writer and actor

Color

“Maggie threw her head back and laughed. 'So you're going to try… what? Birds of a Feather?' she quested.

'Of course not,' Kat said. 'Everyone knows the French government banned the importation of peacocks in 1987.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

Bird

“He who completes a quest does not merely find something. He becomes something.”

Lev Grossman The Magician King

Source: The Magician King

“No matter where we begin, if we pursue knowledge diligently and honestly, our quest will inevitably lead us from the things of the earth to the things of heaven.”

Hugh Nibley (1910–2005) Religious scholar

Knowledge

“Personally, I could do without prophecies or quests for awhile.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

Personality

“You didn’t get the quest you wanted, you got the one you could do.”

Lev Grossman The Magician King

The Magician King

“When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power.”

Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

God

“If pinpointing God's presence were really that simple, then he supposed the beaches would be more crowded in the mornings. They would be filled with people on their own quests, instead of people jogging or walking their dogs or fishing in the surf.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

God , People , Dogs , Fish

“The day obedience becomes a quest and not an irritation is the day you gain power.”

Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

“Even now, my back was still arched with sensual invitation, my bottom was questing up like a cat in heat, and my every move was supple, sinuous. I was one great big come-hither.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

Cats

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”

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

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 1 : A tough mind and a tender heart
Context: The tough mind is sharp and penetrating, breaking through the crust of legends and myths and sifting the true from the false. The tough-minded individual is astute and discerning. He has a strong austere quality that makes for firmness of purpose and solidness of commitment.
Who doubts that this toughness is one of man's greatest needs? Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.

Men , Pain , People , Thinking

“From Santi's earthly tomb with demon's hole,
'Cross Rome the mystic elements unfold.
The path of light is laid, the sacred test,
Let angels guide you on your lofty quest.”

Dan Brown book Angels & Demons

Source: Angels & Demons

Angels , Light

“I've been waiting a long time for a quest, seaweed brain," she said. "Athena is no fan of Poseidon, but if you're going to save the world, I'm the best person to keep you from messing up.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

World , Time , Waiting , Personality

“There was always a quest for more minutes, more hours, faster progress to accomplish more in each day. The simple joy of living between summers was gone.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

Joy , Summer

“If in any quest for magic, in any search for sorcery, witchery, legerdemain, first check the human spirit.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Source: The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories

Search

“In my quest to become unique, I’ve become a statistic.”

Sting (1951) English musician

Broken Music

“It also occurred to him that throughout history, humankind has told two stories: the story of a lost ship sailing the Mediterranean seas in quest of a beloved isle, and the story of a god who allows himself to be crucified on Golgotha.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Source: Collected Fictions

God , History , Sea

“Our culture made a virtue of living only as extroverts. We discouraged the inner journey, the quest for a center. So we lost our center and have to find it again.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

“In her glamorous quest for the darkest light and the lowest high, she now found herself wallowing on the bottom of a filthy garbage bin.”

Terri Blackstock (1957) American writer

Source: Intervention

Light

“I fear I must agree," Magnus murmured. He pressed a hand over his heart and his new peacock-blue waistcoast. "I strive to find some respect in my heart for you, but alas! It seems an impossible quest.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Vampires, Scones, and Edmund Herondale

Fear , Heart

“You will find joy, frustration and sorrow in your quest. Never forget that friendship and loyalty are more precious than riches… Happiness can be brief, but it knows no time in the land of dreams.”

Brian Jacques (1939–2011) British fiction writer known for Redwall animal fantasy novels

Source: Pearls of Lutra

Friendship , Dreams , Time , Joy

“It is best not to go on for great quest for truth, it will only make you miserable”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Truth

“As he mused about these things, he realised that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 44.

Thinking

“By engaging in a delusive quest for happiness, we bring only suffering upon ourselves. In our frantic search for something to quench our thirst, we overlook the water all around us and drive ourselves into exile from our own lives.”

Sharon Salzberg (1952) American writer

Search , Suffering , Water , Happiness

“Say it, reader. Say the word "quest" out loud. It is an extraordinary word, isn't it? So small and yet so full of wonder, so full of hope. so trthen despererux died i n heaven and in peace”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux (2004)

Peace , Hope

“She had to go on this quest. The fate of the world might depend on it. But part of him wanted to say: Forget the world. He didn’t want to be without her.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Fate , World , Parting , Dependency

“I am always in quest of being open to what the universe will bring me.”

Jill Bolte Taylor (1959) American neuroscientist

Universe

“I told you, everyone understands a quest.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

Understanding

“No. This is right. I feel it. I am the Catalyst, and I came to change all things. Prophets become warriors, dragons hunt as wolves.
Fitz in Assassin's Quest”

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Quest

Source: Assassin's Quest

Feeling , Change

“Most vagabonds i knowed don't ever want to find the culprit that remains the object of their long relentless quest. The obsession's in the chasing and not the apprehending, the pursuit you see and never the arrest" - Tom Waits "Foreign Affairs”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Waiting

“We read frequently if unknowingly, in quest of a mind more original than our own.”

Harold Bloom (1930–2019) American literary critic and scholar

Reading

“The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Success , Success

“By 1954, when Brown came up for decision, it had been apparent for some time that segregation rarely if ever produced equality. Quite aside from any question of psychology, the physical facilities provided for blacks were not as good as those provided for whites. That had been demonstrated in a long series of cases... The Court's realistic choice, therefore, was either to abandon the quest for equality by allowing segregation or to forbid segregation in order to achieve equality. There was no third choice. Either choice would violate one aspect of the original understanding, but there was no possibility of avoiding that. Since equality and segregation were mutually inconsistent, though the ratifiers did not understand that, both could not be honored. When that is seen, it is obvious the Court must choose equality and prohibit state-imposed segregation. The purpose that brought the fourteenth amendment into being was equality before the law, and equality, not separation, was written into the law.”

Robert Bork (1927–2012) American legal scholar

The Tempting of America (1990), page 82; on Brown v. Board of Education.

Law , Understanding , Question , Decision

“Whether we like it or not, we are all on a journey, a Quest if you will, every day of our lives, and the path we must take is full of perils, and our destiny can never be predicted in advance.”

Alan Hirsch (1959) South African missionary

Source: The Faith of Leap (2011), p. 20

“Religion may be a quest for the truth, but it has no way of finding the truth, or verifying what it claims to find. Our knowledge of what God is like has not advanced one iota over the ideas of the 1500s.
And insofar as theological interpretation has changed, it’s done so not as a result of faith’s quest for truth, but of pressure from science and secular morality. Really, can any theologian, philosopher, or scientist tell me anything about God now that we didn’t know 500 years ago? Then ask a scientist what we know now about science that we didn’t know in 1500.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" Do both science and faith produce truth? http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/08/11/do-both-science-and-faith-produce-truth/" August 11, 2012

God , Truth , Faith , Religion

“A work upon the plan originally contemplated by the Author seems still to be required, to initiate the young and uninstructed in the study of those MEDALS 0F CREATION—those electrotypes of nature—the mineralized remains of the plants and animals which successively flourished in the earlier ages of our planet, in periods incalculably remote, and long antecedent to all human history and tradition. With this conviction the present volumes are offered… as a guide for the Student and the Amateur Collector of fossil remains; for the intelligent Observer who may desire to possess a general knowledge of the subject, without intending to pursue Geology as a science; and for the Tourist who may wish, in the course of his travels, to employ profitably a leisure hour in quest of those interesting memorials of the ancient physical revolutions of our globe, which he will find everywhere presented to his observation.”

Gideon Mantell (1790–1852) British scientist and obstetrician

Preface to the First Edition
The Medals of Creation or First Lessons in Geology (1854)

Age , Travel , History , Intelligence

“Phenomenology is dialectic in ear-mode – a massive and decentralized quest for roots, for ground.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 62

“Come on, readers, give me one example of a question that religion has answered to everyone’s satisfaction—one example of a “truth” found in religion’s quest for truth.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" Do both science and faith produce truth? http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/08/11/do-both-science-and-faith-produce-truth/" August 11, 2012

Truth , Religion , Question

“The quest to rationally prove the possibility of sentience in a computer (or perhaps in the Internet) is the modern version of proving God's existence. …eventually a cybernetically minded twenty-first century version of Kant will appear in order to present a tedious "proof" that such adventures are futile.”

Jaron Lanier (1960) American computer scientist, musician, and author

"One Half of a Manifesto," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

God , Appearance

“The search for justice and security, the struggle for equality of opportunity, the quest for tolerance and harmony, the pursuit of human dignity – these are moral imperatives which we must work towards and think about on a daily basis.”

Aga Khan IV (1936) 49th and current Imam of Nizari Ismailism

Remarks by His Highness the Aga Khan at Évora University, Évora, Portugal (12 February 2006)]

Justice , Search , Thinking

“This railway system practically administers the government of the United States, in all things that concern the system, and the governments of the several states of the Union as well. The majority of the United States senators recently elected have been its mere appointees and lobbyists, and agents at the same time for other corporate properties.
In all this corrupt exploitation of the nation by the most degrading sort of economic force, in this debauchery of every citizen of my commonwealth, I am obliged to participate, in order to travel anywhere upon the national highways, whether I go upon God's errands or go in quest of evil to do.”

George D. Herron (1862–1925) American clergyman, writer and activist

Source: Between Caesar and Jesus (1899), pp. 21-22

God , Travel , Evil , Time

“Even bold and revolutionary thinkers bow to the judgment of science. Kropotkin wants to break up all existing institutions, but he does not touch science. Ibsen goes very far in his critique of bourgeois society, but he retains science as a measure of truth. Levi Strauss has made us realize that Western thought is not the lonely peak of human achievement it was once thought to be, but he and his followers exclude science from their relativization of ideologies. Marx and Engels were convinced that science would aid the workers in their quest for mental and social liberation.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Science in a Free Society

pg 75.
Science in a Free Society (1978)

Truth , Science

“It is true that the successful quest for wisdom might lead to the result that wisdom is not the one thing needful. But this result would owe its relevance to the fact that it is the result of the quest for wisdom: the very disavowal of reason must be reasonable disavowal.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

Source: Natural Right and History (1953), p. 36

Wisdom , Success

“The scientific quest is a journey into the unknown.”

Paul Davies (1946) British physicist

Source: The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World (1992), Ch. 1: 'Reason and Belief', p. 21

“It is the great glory of the quest for human knowledge that, while making some small contribution to that quest, we can also continue to learn and to take pleasure in learning.”

William Alfred Fowler (1911–1995) American nuclear physicist

William A. Fowler's speech at the Nobel Banquet http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1983/fowler-speech.html, December 10, 1983.

Pleasure , Knowledge , Learning

“BEWARE UNDERLANDERS, TIME HANGS BY A THREAD, THE HUNTERS ARE HUNTED, WHITE WATER RUNS RED. THE GNAWERS WILL STRIKE TO EXTINGUISH THE REST. THE HOPE OF THE HOPELESS RESIDES IN A QUEST.”

Suzanne Collins The Underland Chronicles

The Prophecy of Grey, p. 108
The Underland Chronicles, Gregor the Overlander (2003)

Hope , Water , Time

“Territory we do not want; having, it is probable, already more than we well know how to manage. Instead therefore of countenancing that vagrant and unsettled way of life which has become habitual to so many of our people; and that very general passion they have to be for ever running back in quest of fresh lands; a practice not more unpropitious to all agricultural improvements, than likely to keep us involved in Indian wars; let us enlarge our empire by the civilization of the Indians; who already have a better title to any of our un-located lands, than we can possibly give any new comers”

Jonathan Boucher (1738–1804) English minister

[He goes on to cite the example of Sir William Johnson's work with the Mohawks as Indian Superintendent, and to explain further what he means by "civilization"- in particular, encouraging the use of agriculture instead of hunting].
"A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution" (London, Robinson, 1797)

Life , War , People , Way

“Whatever the intellectual is too certain of, if he is healthily playful, he begins to find unsatisfactory. The meaning of his intellectual life lies not in the possession of truth but in the quest for new uncertainties.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), p. 30

Life , Truth

“Let none turn over books, or roam the stars in quest of God, who sees him not in man.”

Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) Swiss poet

No. 398
Aphorisms on Man (c. 1788)

God , Books , Star

“We live in a world that is subjectively open. And we are designed by evolution to be "informavores," epistemically hungry seekers of information, in an endless quest to improve our purchase on the world.”

Daniel Dennett book Freedom Evolves

Freedom Evolves (2003)

World

“Because a cause was taken to be sufficient for its effect, nothing was required to explain the effect other than the cause. Consequently, the quest for causes was environment-free. It employed what we now call 'closed-system' thinking. Laws. —like that of freely falling bodies—-were formulated so as to exclude environmental effects.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1970s, Redesigning the future, 1974, p. 10.

Law , Thinking

“…classic philosophy maintained that change, and consequently time, are marks of inferior reality, holding that true and ultimate reality is immutable and eternal. Human reasons, all too human, have given birth to the idea that over and beyond the lower realm of things that shift like the sands on the seashore there is the kingdom of the unchanging, of the complete, the perfect. The grounds for the belief are couched in the technical language of philosophy, but the grounds for the cause is the heart's desire for surcease from change, struggle, and uncertainty. The eternal and immutable is the consummation of mortal man's quest for certainty.”

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

Time and Individuality (1940)

Idea , Birth , Reality , Change

“There probably is no more important quest in all science than the attempt to understand those very particular events in evolution by which brains worked out that special trick that has enabled them to add to the cosmic scheme of things: color, sound, pain, pleasure, and all the other facets of mental experience.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) American neuroscientist

"Evolution of the Human Brain" (1964), p. 3

Pain , Pleasure , Color , Understanding

“The longest journey
Is the journey inwards.
Of him who has chosen his destiny,
Who has started upon his quest
For the source of his being.”

Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961) Swedish diplomat, economist, and author

Variant translation: The longest journey is the journey inward, for he who has chosen his destiny has started upon his quest for the source of his being.
Markings (1964)

“Each system is unique. However, by capitalizing on similarities we can reduce the time, effort, and cost for some or all of them, and thus the quest for formalized design methods becomes more attractive.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), Systems Engineering Methods (1967), p. vii

Effort , Time

“Cynics and physics students put it like this:
:1. You can't win.
:2. You can't break even.
:3. You can't get out of the game.
:* Presenting a standard humorous summary of the three principal laws of thermodynamics in Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos : The Scientific Quest for the Secret of the Universe (1991), p. 106”

Dennis Overbye (1944) American writer

Secret , Law , Game , Universe

“Much of philosophy concerns man's search for holistic concepts which will help him see a meaningful pattern in the complexity with which his perceptual world confronts him. What is new is the rapidly growing intensity of the quest, and the modern context of the search. Plato's Republic is from a world quite different from that of Boguslaw's. The New Utopians.”

Richard F. Ericson (1919–1993) American academic

Source: Organizational cybernetics and human values (1969), p. 1

World , Search , Help

“On the other hand, we must see what peace for the Arabs means in a real sense of security on another level. Peace for the Arabs means the kind of economic security that they so desperately need. These nations, as you know, are part of that third world of hunger, of disease, of illiteracy. I think that as long as these conditions exist there will be tensions, there will be the endless quest to find scapegoats. So there is a need for a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, where we lift those who are at the bottom of the economic ladder and bring them into the mainstream of economic security.”

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

68th Annual Convention of the Rabbinical Assembly for Conservative Judaism, March 25, 1968, less than 2 weeks before his death. Source: Martin Luther King's pro-Israel legacy by Allen B. West on February 15, 2014 at AllenBWest.com. http://allenbwest.com/2014/02/martin-luther-kings-pro-israel-legacy/, See also 2014-06-09 Youtube video Dr. King's pro-Israel Legacy (in 5 minutes) by IBSI - Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Dd7pIB0CP0
1960s

Hunger , World , Disease , Peace

“The desire for truth so prominent in the quest of science, a reaching out of the spirit from its isolation to something beyond, a response to beauty in nature and art, an Inner Light of conviction and guidance—are these as much a part of our being as our sensitivity to sense impressions?”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Source: Science and the Unseen World (1929), Ch. IV, p.42-43

Truth , Beauty , Art , Nature

“When we see the possibilities of life, reflected in our own life, the quest for peace in the external world has to be preceded by a quest for peace in one’s internal world. Having had the opportunity for such an activity in my own life, I understand that peace is possible, peace is inevitable, if we work towards it.”

Dennis Kucinich (1946) Ohio politician

Interview with Monte Leach, Peace is possible, peace is inevitable, Share International (July 2003) http://www.share-international.org/magazine/old_issues/2003/july_03.htm#voice.

Life , World , Peace , Understanding