110 quotes found
"A narrow religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live only for a limited time and a limited purpose."
"I am working in everybody and whatever men may think or do, they can do nothing but help in my purpose."
"Not result is the purpose of action, but God's eternal delight in becoming, seeing and doing."
"The great rule of life is to have no schemes but one unalterable purpose."
"All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art."
"In day-to-day life it is easy for the utilitarian lens of metrics to eclipse the moral lens that drew us to our work in the first place."
"Oppression tries to defend itself by its utility. But we have seen that it is one of the lies of the serious mind to attempt to give the word “useful” an absolute meaning; nothing is useful if it is not useful to man; nothing is useful to man if the latter is not in a position to define his own ends and values, if he is not free. Doubtless an oppressive regime can achieve constructions which will serve man: they will serve him only from the day that he is free to use them; as long as the reign of the oppressor lasts, none of the benefits of oppression is a real benefit. Neither in the past nor in the future can one prefer a thing to man, who alone can establish the reason for all things."
"Plato defined a slave as one who accepts from another the purposes which control his conduct."
"Poetry has historically been allied with religion and morals; it has served the purpose of penetrating the mysterious depths of things."
"I would rather work with five people who really believe in what they are doing rather than five hundred who can't see the point."
"There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer."
"We look upon this shaken Earth, and we declare our firm and fixed purpose — the building of a peace with justice in a world where moral law prevails. The building of such a peace is a bold and solemn purpose. To proclaim it is easy. To serve it will be hard."
"I need to have a purpose in life and for that I might sacrifice some of the luxuries that I enjoy; fortunately I am fairly adaptable. I try to be aware, flexible and unbiased in my thinking. If I have learnt anything, it is that life forms no logical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?"
"I, too, believed it was impossible to change the existing society into one that would be for the benefit of all; neither could I espouse any given ideal for society. But [...] I felt that even if one did not have an ideal vision of society, one could have one’s work to do. Whether it was successful or not was not our concern; it was enough that we believed it to be a valid work. The accomplishment of that work, I believed, was what our real life was about. Yes. I want to carry out a work of my own; for I feel that by so doing our lives are rooted in the here and now, not in some far-off ideal goal."
"Even flies, parasites and microbes have their purpose to fulfil, and there is nothing superfluous in creation."
"Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction."
"The final goal of the human race is independence and mutual aid, the realization of freedom, equality, and fraternity. If we look at the evolution of politics, law, religion, and ethics, they have been developing from heteronomy toward autonomy; thus after attaining self-governance the people will use their eventual individual surpluses to compensate for other’s inefficiencies. This is natural evolution, and this is also the ultimate ideal of life. Everyone should fight and strive toward this goal."
"Aim at the sun, and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if aimed at an object on a level with yourself."
"Purpose has no place in biology, but history has no meaning without it."
"The purposes of the Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance."
"Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them."
"Every nation, like every individual, has received a mission that it must fulfil."
"Everyone has a goal which appears to be great, at least to himself, and is great when deepest conviction, the innermost voice of the heart, pronounces it great. ... This voice, however, is easily drowned out, and what we thought to be inspiration may have been created by the fleeting moment and again perhaps destroyed by it. ... We must seriously ask ourselves, therefore, whether we are really inspired about a vocation, whether an inner voice approves of it, or whether the inspiration was a deception, whether that which we took as the Deity’s calling to us was self-deceit. But how else could we recognize this except by searching for the source of our inspiration?"
"Our purpose is to educate as well as to entertain."
"Purposes are deduced from behaviour, not from rhetoric or stated goals."
"We all engage in purposeful activity, and we judge ourselves and others in terms of success in achieving the purposes that we set before ourselves. Yet we accept as the final product of this purposeful activity a picture of the world from which purpose has been eliminated. Purpose is a meaningful concept in relation to our own consciousness of ourselves, but it is allowed no place in our understanding of the world of facts."
"The hypothesis will lead to our thinking of features of each Universe as purposed; and this will stand or fall with the hypothesis. Yet a purpose essentially involves growth, and so cannot be attributed to God. Still it will, according to the hypothesis, be less false to speak so than to represent God as purposeless."
"There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright."
"A union of indomitable resolution in the achievement of a given purpose, with patience and moderation in the policy pursued, and with kindly charity and consideration and friendliness to those of opposite belief, marks the very spirit in which we of to-day should approach the pressing problems of the present."
"No matter how stormy the ocean is, the river still knows its way."
"There's no escaping reason, no denying purpose, for as we both know, without purpose we would not exist. It is purpose that created us, purpose that connects us, purpose that pulls us, that guides us, that drives us; it is purpose that defines us, purpose that binds us."
"There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. [...] Live being true to the single purpose of the moment."
"I take great satisfaction in seeing people and organizations achieve goals they might have originally believed to be beyond their reach."
"There are two things people want more than sex and money . . . i.e recognition and praise."
"In the eye of that Supreme Being to whom our whole internal frame is uncovered, dispositions hold the place of actions."
"Dreadful will be the day when the world becomes contented, when one great universal satisfaction spreads itself over the world. Sad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life that he is living, with the thoughts that he is thinking, with the deeds that he is doing, when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger which he knows that he was meant and made to do because he is a child of God."
"Bhikkhus, the lazy person dwells in suffering, soiled by evil unwholesome states, and great is the personal good that he neglects. But the energetic person dwells happily, secluded from evil unwholesome states, and great is the personal good that he achieves. It is not by the inferior that the supreme is attained; rather, it is by the supreme that the supreme is attained. Bhikkhus, this holy life is a beverage of cream; the Teacher is present. Therefore, bhikkhus, arouse your energy for the attainment of the as-yet-unattained, for the achievement of the as-yet-unachieved, for the realization of the as-yet-unrealized."
"See a person's means … Observe his motives. Examine that in which he rests. How can a person conceal his character?"
"In general, we do well to let an opponent's motives alone. We are seldom just to them. Our own motives on such occasions are often worse than those we assail."
"Motivation is a battle for the heart, not just an appeal to the mind. Passion is always an expression of the soul."
"I believe with Schopenhauer that one of the strongest motives that leads men to art and science is to escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from personal life into the world of objective perception and thought; this desire may be compared with the townsman's irresistible longing to escape from his noisy, cramped surroundings into the silence of high mountains, where the eye ranges freely through the still, pure air and fondly traces out the restful contours apparently built for eternity. ... Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. That is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientist do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience."
"We must not inquire too curiously into motives…. they are apt to become feeble in the utterance: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must keep the germinating grain away from the light."
"There is a desire deep within the soul which drives man from the seen to the unseen, to philosophy and to the divine."
"The human mind is always inexorable in demanding a motive for all human actions. It is only himself that each man permits to act without one, and avails himself of the privilege with astonishing frequency."
"Anybody who says that we understand human motivation, that we can formulate simple and clear reasons for why people what they do, is either lying or naïve."
"It is not the motive, properly speaking, that determines the working of the will; but it is the will that imparts strength to the motive. As Coleridge says: " It is the man that makes the motive, and not the motive the man.""
"The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate."
"The plea of good intentions is not one that can be allowed to have much weight in passing historical judgment upon a man whose wrong-headedness and distorted way of looking at things produced, or helped to produce, such incalculable evil; there is a wide political applicability in the remark attributed to a famous Texan, to the effect that he might, in the end, pardon a man who shot him on purpose, but that he would surely never forgive one who did so accidentally."
"When the going gets tough, the tough get going."
"Iago's soliloquy—the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity—how awful it is!"
"What makes life dreary is the want of motive."
"A good intention clothes itself with sudden power."
"For there's nothing we read of in torture's inventions, Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions."
"Men's minds are as variant as their faces. Where the motives of their actions are pure, the operation of the former is no more to be imputed to them as a crime, than the appearance of the latter; for both, being the work of nature, are alike unavoidable."
"As a general proposition, we may say that the drive that carries forward any activity, when it is running freely and effectively, is inherent In that activity. It is only when an activity is running by its own drive that it can run thus freely and effectively; for as long as it is being driven by some extrinsic motive, it is subject to the distraction of that motive."
"We all know this type of behavior, where the interest of the performer is in himself and not in the work. One who has thoroughly prepared for a public performance of some sort, may break down in the performance because of inability to get away from the desire to do his best in the presence of all these spectators, this self-consciousness making impossible a direct application of his energies to the work in hand."
"The motive that originally induced him to go in for this event may very well have been a desire to distinguish himself; but this motive has to drop out of sight or else by its distraction spoil the performance. It is not true, then, that the motive that initiates a given activity furnishes the motive force for the whole activity; it simply leads the performer up to the act, but the motive force for the act itself must be inherent."
"Motives do not concern me; they are a dangerous subject with which to deal."
"What passes in the mind of man is not scrutable by any human tribunal; it is only to be collected from his acts."
"We must judge of a man's motives from his overt acts."
"There is no entering into the secret thoughts of a man's heart."
"It is impossible to dive into the secret recesses of a man's heart."
"To enter into the hearts of men belongs to him who can explore the human heart."
"It is not for human judgment to dive into the heart of man, to know whether his intentions are good or evil."
". . . The fallacious use of the principle that you cannot look into a man's mind. It is said you cannot do that: therefore what follows? It is said that you are to have fixed rules to tell you that he must have meant something, one way or the other, when certain exterior phenomena arise. The answer is that there is no such thing as an absolute criterion which gives you certain index to a man's mind. There is nothing outside his mind which is an absolute indication of what is going on inside. So far from saying that you cannot look into a man's mind, you must look into it, if you are going to find fraud against him: and unless you think you see what must have been in his mind, you cannot find him guilty of fraud."
"He revealeth the deep and secret things, he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him."
"The plaintiff cannot dive into the secret recesses of his (the defendant's) heart."
"Every man has a right to keep his own sentiments if he pleases."
"Men's feelings are as different as their faces."
"A man acting for himself may indulge his own caprices, and consider what is convenient or agreeable to himself, as well as what is strictly prudent, and his prudential motives cannot afterwards be separated from the others which may have governed him."
"Motives are very often immaterial with reference to the manner of disposing of a suit. It has been said by an eminent Judge, that if you were to look into motives of suitors, Courts of justice would not sit above a month in the year, and would have little to do. Of course there are, in numerous instances, motives for litigation which, if they could be looked into, would prevent a Court of justice from interfering. But generally I agree that it is not the rule so to regard them."
"The rule of our law is that the immediate cause, the causa proxima, and not the remote cause, is to be looked at: for, as Lord Bacon says: "It were infinite for the law to judge the causes of causes and their impulsions one of another; therefore it contenteth itself with the immediate cause, and judgeth of acts by that, without looking to any further degree.""
"I think the motives of the legislature in passing an Act of Parliament are to be taken to be proper motives."
"It was by no means uncommon, where the legislature had a particular object in view in making a particular statute, to extend the enactments beyond the immediate and original object, and apply it to other matter suggested by it."
"Bonam quippe intentionem, hoc est, rectam in se dicimus, operationem vero non quod boni aliquid in se suscipiat, sed quod ex bona intentione procedat. Unde et ab eodem homine cum in diversis temporibus idem fiat, pro diversitate tamen intentione eius operatio modo bono modo mala dicitur."
"Part of how we come to take command of our world, to take command of our environment, to make these tools by which we're able to do this, is we ask ourselves questions about it the whole time. So this man starts to ask himself questions. "This world," he says, "so who made it?" Now, of course he thinks that, because he makes things himself. So he's looking for someone who would have made this world. He says, "Well, so who would have made this world? Well, it must be something a little like me. Obviously much much bigger. And necessarily invisible. But he would have made it. Now why did he make it?" Now we always ask ourselves "why?" because we look for intention around us; because we always intend– we do something with intention. We boil an egg in order to eat it. So we look at the rocks, and we look at the trees, and we wonder what intention is here even though it doesn't have intention."
"According to Husserl, that 'act of meaning', or the use of a given phrase as an expression of a certain language, consists in the fact that a sensory content appears in consciousness, by means of which one might think visually about that phrase, should that content be joined by an appropriate intention directed to that phrase. But when a given phrase is used as an expression belonging to a certain language, then that sensory content is joined by another intention, not necessarily a representative one, which is however in principle directed to something other than that phrase itself. Together with the sensory content in question, that intention makes up a uniform experience, but neither the experiencing of that sensory content, nor that intention is a complete, independent experience. Both the one and the other are non-independent parts of the experience as a whole. The meaning of a given expression (as a type) would be, according to Husserl, the type under which that intention joined to the sensory content must fall if the given phrase is to be used as an expression belonging precisely to that language"
"Nullum malum bona intentione factum excusatur."
"The simplest way of expressing the major thesis of the theory of spontaneous order is to say that it is concerned with those regularities in society, or orders of events, which are neither (1) the product of deliberate human contrivance (such as a statutory code of law or a dirigiste economic plan) nor (2) akin to purely natural phenomena (such as the weather, which exists quite independently of human intervention). While the words conventional and natural refer, respectively, to these two regularities, the ‘third realm,’ that of social regularities, consists of those institutions and practices which are the result of human action but not the result of some specific human intention."
"My first concert - apart from Beethoven at School and Satie at the opening of my exhibition in Kleve in 1960 - was at the gallery Parnass in Wuppertal in 1963. Dressed like a regular pianist in dark grey flannel, black tie and no hat, I played the piano all over – not just the keys – with many pairs of old shoes until it disintegrated. My intention was neither destructive nor nihilistic. “Heal like with like” – similia similibus curantur – in the homeopathic sense. The main intention was to indicate a new beginning.. ..or simply a revolutionary act. This was my first public Fluxus appearance."
"Courts of justice ought to carry into effect the intentions of testators as far as they can consistently with the rules of law."
"INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act."
"If our intention had been merely to bring back a handful of soil and rocks from the lunar gravel pit and then forget the whole thing, we would certainly be history's biggest fools. But that is not our intention now — it never will be. What we are seeking in tomorrow's trip is indeed that key to our future on earth. We are expanding the mind of man. We are extending this God-given brain and these God-given hands to their outermost limits and in so doing all mankind will benefit. All mankind will reap the harvest. … What we will have attained when Neil Armstrong steps down upon the moon is a completely new step in the evolution of man."
"The intention of the testator is the polar star by which we must be guided."
"Conscientia rectæ voluntatis maxima consolatio est rerum incommodarum."
"Veracity does not consist in saying, but in the intention of communicating truth."
"Few men, I imagine, who become great started on their career with the intention of becoming so. The intention generally accompanies the unsuccessful. The secret of real greatness seems to be a happy knack of doing things as they come in your way; and they rarely present themselves in the form which careful preparation would enable you to deal with."
"Why do philosophers call aboutness "? ...[[Middle Ages|[M]edieval]] philosophers ...coined the term, noting the similarity between such phenomena and the act of aiming an arrow at something (intendere arcum in). Intentional phenomena are equipped with metaphorical arrows... aimed at... whatever... the phenomena are about or refer to or allude to. But... many phenomena that exhibit this minimal... intentionality do not do anything intentionally... Perceptual states, emotional states, and states of memory... can be entirely involuntary or automatic responses... The medieval theorists noted that the arrow of intentionality could... be aimed at nothing... in a rather particular way. They called the object of your thought, real or not, the intentional object. ...Any intentional system is dependent on its... thinking about—perceiving, searching for, identifying, fearing, recalling—whatever... its "thoughts" are about. ...[T]he best way to confuse a particular intentional system is to exploit a flaw in its way(s) of perceiving or thinking ..[C]onfusing other intentional systems is a major goal in the life of most intentional systems. After all, one of the primary desires... is... for... food ...[and] to avoid becoming the food of another intentional system. ...But ...[t]here is no taking without the possibility of mistaking. That's why it's so important for ...theorists to ...identify and distinguish the ...varieties of taking (and mistaking) ...to have an accurate picture of ...capacities for distinguishing ..."thinking about" things."
"In the creative act, the artist goes from intention to realization through a chain of totally subjective reactions. His struggle towards the realization is a series of efforts, pains, satisfactions, refusals, decisions, which also cannot be fully self-conscious, at least on the aesthetic plane. The result of his struggle is a difference between the intention and its realization, a difference which the artist is not aware of."
"Consequently, in the chain of reactions accompanying the creative act, a link is missing. This gap which represents the inability of the artist to express fully his intention, this difference between what he intended to realize and did realize, is the personal 'art coefficient', contained in the work."
"A fallacy is an unsound or inconclusive argument; an argument supposed or alleged to prove a conclusion which it does not prove. The name is sometimes confined to sophisms, that is, unsound arguments used with the intention to deceive. But the intention is a point of secondary importance in the theory of fallacies; and, indeed, those fallacies in which the reasoner deceives himself are by far more dangerous than the others, because they are by far more common. The term Fallacy, it will thus be observed, is applicable to an argument taken as a whole, not to any of the propositions of which the argument is composed. The propositions severally must be true or false: the argument which they constitute must be correct or fallacious ; that is, its conclusion must either follow or not follow from the premises."
"Technical rules are not to be relied upon in explaining the intention of testators: and yet cases of intention are much embarrassed by authorities."
"At root karma or ‘action’ is considered a mental act or intention; it is an aspect of our mental life: ‘It is “intention” that I call karma; having formed the intention, one performs acts (karma) by body, speech and mind.’"
"We must decide according to the intention of the legislature, which is to be collected from the general object of the Act and from the particular words used in it."
"The Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the People to the intention of their agents. Nor does this conclusion by any means suppose a superiority of the Judicial to the Legislative power. It only supposes that the power of the People is superior to both; and that where the will of the Legislature, declared in its statutes, stands in opposition to that of the People, declared in the Constitution, the Judges ought to be governed by the latter rather than the former. They ought to regulate their decisions by the fundamental laws, rather than by those which are not fundamental. [...] whenever a particular statute contravenes the Constitution, it will be the duty of the Judicial tribunals to adhere to the latter and disregard the former."
"People say that my works are "neutral". But if you paint something, it is "something", and it cannot be neutral. Being neutral is a mere expression of a form of intention."
"Simplicity and purity are the two wings by which a man is lifted above all earthly things. Simplicity is in the intention — purity in the affection. Simplicity tends to God,— purity apprehends and tastes Him."
"The difference between good and bad intentions is this : — that good intentions are so very satisfactory in themselves, that it really seems a work of supererogation to carry them into execution ; whereas evil ones have a restlessness that can only be satisfied by action — and, to the shame of fate be it said, very many facilities always offer for their being effected."
"Nichts unter der Sonne ist Zufall—am wenigsten das wovon die Absicht so klar in die Augen leuchtet."
"I do not see why, if we can tell what a man intends, and can give effect to his intention as expressed, we should be driven out of it by other cases or decisions in other cases. I always protest against anything of the sort."
"That which is produced with intention has passed over from non-existence to existence."
"Management [ Providence ], knowledge, and intention are not the same when ascribed to us and when ascribed to God."
"As there is a difference between works of nature and productions of human handicraft, so there is a difference between God's rule, providence, and intention in reference to all natural forces, and our rule, providence, and intention in reference to things which are the objects of our rule, providence, and intention. This lesson is the principal object of the whole Book of Job; it lays down this principle of faith, and recommends us to derive a proof from nature, that we should not fall into the error of imagining His knowledge to be similar to ours, or His intention, providence, and rule similar to ours. When we know this, we shall find everything that may befall us easy to bear; mishap will create no doubts in our hearts concerning God, whether He knows our affairs or not, whether He provides for us or abandons us. On the contrary, our fate will increase our love of God; as is said in the end of this prophecy: "Therefore I abhor myself and repent concerning the dust and ashes" (xlii. 6); and as our Sages say: "The pious do everything out of love, and rejoice in their own afflictions." If you pay to my words the attention which this treatise demands, and examine all that is said in the Book of Job, all will be clear to you, and you will find that I have grasped and taken hold of the whole subject; nothing has been left unnoticed, except such portions as are only introduced because of the context and the whole plan of the allegory. I have explained this method several times in the course of this treatise."
"It may now be easily seen how great the difference is between the institution of government, as understood by Paine and the Declaration of Independence, and the institution of the State. … The nature and intention of government … are social. Based on the idea of natural rights, government secures those rights to the individual by strictly negative intervention, making justice costless and easy of access; and beyond that it does not go. The State, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing."
"A bon entendeur ne faut qu'un parole."
"Better the rudest work that tells a story or records a fact, than the richest without meaning. There should not be a single ornament put upon great civic buildings, without some intellectual intention."
"Sometimes, to do wrong deeds, one's intentions don't have to be bad; unfavorable timing and circumstances might lead one to do so."
"We do not judge the outcome of a process by the intentions of its authors. We aim to analyse the objective effects of actions, regardless of their intentions."
"These laws must be construed according to the intention of them: and the circumstances of things at the time of enacting them ought to be taken into consideration."
"Eo animo quidque debetur quo datur, nec quantum sit sed a quali profectum voluntate perpenditur."