Purpose Quotes

Gratitude, purpose, camaraderie, love, family, usefulness, art, pleasure-all these are within my grasp, requiring of me only that I receive them. ~ John Leland

But people do. They love each other and they misunderstand on purpose and they fight and then suddenly they aren't the same one. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

At first glance, the key and the lock it fits may seem very different," Sazed said. "Different in shape, different in function, different in design. The man who looks at them without knowledge of their true nature might think them opposites, for one is meant to open, and the other to keep closed. Yet, upon closer examination he might see that without one, the other becomes useless. The wise man then sees that both lock and key were created for the same purpose. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Shine the light of awareness on your disempowering beliefs and choose to substitute them with empowering beliefs. This way you will choose love over fear and your path to purpose becomes clear. ~ Sharon Kirstin

I'm a big micro manager; I'm a stickler about organisation; everything needs a place, a purpose, and micro managing myself even when I'm in the studio. ~ Christina Aguilera

And God created every living creature
that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak.
God leaned close as mud as man sat up, looked around, and spoke.
Man blinked. "What is the purpose of all this?" he asked politely.
"Everything must have a purpose?" asked God.
"Certainly," said man.
"Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this," said God. And He
went away. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

But I killed a man just like my mother did. David says it's okay because I didn't mean to, and because he was about to kill that little kid. But I'm pretty sure my mom didn't mean to kill my dad, either, so what difference does that make, meaning or not meaning to do something? Accident or on purpose, the result is the same, and that's one fewer life than there should be in the world. ~ Veronica Roth

It's a little-known secret, and it should probably stay that way: attempting suicide usually jump-starts your brain chemistry. There must be something about taking all those pills that either floods the brain sufficiently or depletes it so completely that balance is restored. Whatever the mechanism, the result is that you emerge on the other side of the attempt with an awareness of what it means to be alive. Simple acts seem miraculous: you can stand transfixed for hours just watching the wind ruffle the tiny hairs along the top of your arm. And always, with every sensation, is the knowledge that you must have survived for a reason. You just can't doubt it anymore. You must have a purpose, or you would have died. You have the rest of your life to discover what that purpose is. And you can't wait to start looking. ~ Terri Cheney

Johnny sighed in the darkness. "I don't understand the exact purpose of the Keats Project or the other Old Earth analogs, but I suspect that it is part of a TechnoCore project going back at least seven standard centuries to realize the Ultimate Intelligence."
"The Ultimate Intelligence," I said, exhaling smoke. "Uh-huh. So the TechnoCore is trying to ... what? ... to build God."
"Yes. ~ Dan Simmons

We should - we will - welcome people of faith into the political process ... It is essential that believers enter the arena. Your involvement in politics helps determine how well our democracy works. We have finally learned that government programs cannot solve our problems. Government can hand out money, but government cannot put hope in our hearts or a sense of purpose in our lives. ~ George W. Bush

Every day is predetermined by God. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Spiritual literature can be a great aid to an aspirant, or it can be a terrible hindrance. If it is used to inspire practice, motivate compassion, ad nourish devotion, it serves a very valuable purpose. If scriptural study is used for mere intellectual understanding, for pride of accomplishment, or as a substitute for actual practice, then one is taking in too much mental food, which is sure to result in intellectual indigestion. (152) ~ Prem Prakash

The fact that you are attending church does not mean you are already serving the Lord ~ Sunday Adelaja

Democracy is a continuous, open process of civility.
A democracy can never be "done"; updating democracy can never be over.

Democracy can be nothing else but a continuous process, because we use it to organize our life, and life is nothing but a continuous process.

Democracy can be compared to an operating system or an anti-virus software; if it does not get perpetually updated, it becomes obsolete very fast.

Trusting the updates or the "improvements" of democracy to the elected and the owned mass media is like trusting the updates of an anti-virus program to virus creators; it defeats the purpose of updates or improvements. ~ Haroutioun Bochnakian

He wanted to do, to be, to feel- and could not; he wanted sense, he wanted purpose- in Freud's words, 'Work and Love'. ~ Oliver Sacks

Choose your friends with caution; plan your future with purpose, and frame your life with faith. ~ Thomas S. Monson

The ultimate purpose of Zen,' I remembered the roshi telling me, 'is not in the going away from the world but in the coming back. Zen is not just a matter of gaining enlightenment; it's a matter of acting in a world of love and compassion. ~ Pico Iyer

My father was a man who didn't consider himself learned. He was a man who liked to be a farmer. He enjoyed his dairy farm and felt the calling. So there was a dedication. I was dedicated as a child to the service of God, and so there was this continual centering of a greater purpose than your own. ~ Phil Jackson

Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man's capacity to live. ~ Ayn Rand

The night before, go over your schedule and see what you're going to do and what the purpose of what you're doing is. I advocate having a two-column schedule. On the left, put down all your appointments and phone calls. On the right, put down what the purpose is. ~ Robert Pozen

The Sinai covenant itself, then, is a law-covenant. The land is given to Israel, but for the purpose of fulfilling its covenantal vocation. Remaining in the land is there fore conditional on Israel's personal performance of the stipulations that people swore at Sinai ... The ultimate promise of a worldwide family of Abraham
sinners justified and glorified in a renewed creation
is unconditional in its basis, while the continuing existence of the national theocracy as a type of that everlasting covenant depended on Israel's obedience ... The Decalogue and Joshua 24 fit this suzerainty pattern, but as Mendenhall observe, "it can readily be seen that the covenant with Abraham (and Noah) is of completely different form." P.15 ~ Michael S. Horton

Americans tended to think of war as something that had to be done from time to time, for a particular purpose or goal. They fought not for the sake of fighting but for the sake of winning. ~ David Hackett Fischer

You admit you're doing this on purpose?"
"This?"
"This - provoking me."
"Say 'provoking' again. Your mouth looks provocative when you do."
―Vee said," I'm trying to read the title he's holding…hang on…How to Be a Stalker."
"He is not checking out a book with that title." But I wasn't so sure.
"It's either that of How to Radiate Sexy Without Trying."
― Becca Fitzpatrick, Hush, Hush Hush, Hush

Vee said," I'm trying to read the title he's holding…hang on…How to Be a Stalker."
"He is not checking out a book with that title." But I wasn't so sure.
"It's either that of How to Radiate Sexy Without Trying."
― Becca Fitzpatrick, Hush, Hush ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

I have it in my mind that classification is a necessary condition of the working of the mental implement but that it is a departure from the objective truth of things, that classification is very serviceable for the practical purposes of life but a very doubtful preliminary to those fine penetrations the philosophical purpose, in its more arrogant moods, demands. All the peculiarities of my way of thinking derive from that.

I submit to you that syllogism is based on classification, that all hard logical reasoning tends to imply and is apt to imply a confidence in the objective reality of classification. Consequently in denying that I deny the absolute validity of logic. Classification and number, which in truth ignore the fine differences of objective realities, have in the past of human thought been imposed upon things. [...] The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.

It was about this difficulty that the mind of Plato played a little inconclusively all his life. For the most part he tended to regard the idea as the something behind reality, whereas it seems to me that the idea is the more proximate and less perfect thing, the thing by which the mind, by ignoring individual differences, attempts to comprehend an otherwise unmanageable number of unique realities. ~ H.G. Wells

As to the causation, of the feeling of meaningless, one may say, albeit in an oversimplifying way, that people have enough to live by but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

There are mainly four types of living beings: vegetables, parasites, animals and humans. Vegetables go through life without any conscience of what it means to be alive, and all they can do is react to what happens around them and unto them. Parasites take advantage of others beings to survive but cannot survive on their own. In fact, they rather kill their host than to improve themselves independently. Animals are driven by basic instincts, like sex and pleasure for food. Animals can have attachments but that is as far as they go in what concerns love. Now human, they are capable of all that, plus the ability to love on will, to change, help others change, and create any reality they want to experience. However, almost everyone I encounter, is either pretending to be a plant, a parasite or an animal, not a human. Few people know what it means to be human, and that's how the waste their own existence. This said, we wouldn't need to answer questions about life purpose when the purpose is understood in being what one was born to be. ~ Robin Sacredfire

I find it extraordinary that this purpose which drove how we viewed the world is now considered to be something that has no effect upon us. ~ Jeremy Paxton

He who fails to know his real and true competitor shall never be able to give a good account of his stewardship in life! Your true and real competitor is your real and true solemn duty to your Maker! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. That is clear. Whether one believes in relgion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we all are seeking something better in life. So, I think, the very motion of our life is toward happiness ... ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Here then was a deadlock. I wanted to get the most out of life, but the more I tried to grasp, the more I felt that I was ever outside, missing things. At that time I could not understand at all that my real purpose might be to learn to have no purposes. ~ Marion Milner

Employment wastes the productive time of our lives ~ Sunday Adelaja

First accept the reality that we are all prejudiced because we have things and issues we have biases towards or against, based on our beliefs, thoughts and experiences. Accept that it is possible to differ on opinions, beliefs and philosophies without necessarily becoming inhumane or acrimonious towards each other. ~ Archibald Marwizi

Nobody since Newton has been able to use geometrical methods to the same extent for the like purposes; and as we read the Principia we feel as when we are in an ancient armoury where the weapons are of gigantic size; and as we look at them we marvel what manner of man he was who could use as a weapon what we can scarcely lift as a burden. ~ William Whewell

To rid the world of aggression and contention is the purpose of Aikido ~ Morihei Ueshiba

As many arrows, loosed several ways, come to one mark ... so many a thousand actions, once afoot, end in one purpose. ~ William Shakespeare

Life is a changing sequence of situations.If you do not change something, something will change you. ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The purpose of concept art as a genre is to unbrainwash our mathematical and logical faculties. ~ Henry Flynt

My lectures, based on Islamic teachings, were on various subjects. Some of the titles were, 'The Intoxication of Life,' 'The Purpose of Life,' 'The Real Cause of Man's Distress,' 'The Journey to the Goal in Life,' and, one of my favorites, 'The Heart of Man.' They contained important insights that spoke to something deep inside me. ~ Muhammad Ali

Freud expressed the opinion - not quite in earnest, though, it seemed to me - that philosophy was the most decent form of sublimation of repressed sexuality, nothing more. In response I put the question, 'What then is science, particularly psychoanalytic psychology?' Whereupon he, visible a bit surprised, answered evasively: 'At least psychology has a social purpose. ~ Ludwig Binswanger

God created you for His higher purpose and for your better good ~ Sunday Adelaja

If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path. ~ Brene Brown

If sex is a journey, orgasm is the both the purpose and journey's end. ~ Chloe Thurlow

all the respects that I have so far mentioned, conversation fits the bill of a free association which is subservient to no purpose but itself, and which is destroyed by the bossiness and urgencies of the planner, the utopian and the rationalist. On the other hand, conversations have to be among few participants if they are to dispense with some kind of central discipline or with accepted procedures and conventions. As ~ Roger Scruton

Uselessness
Let mine not be the saddest fate of all,
To live beyond my greater self; to see
My faculties decaying, as the tree
Stands stark and helpless while its green leaves fall
Let me hear rather the imperious call,
Which all men dread, in my glad morning time,
And follow death ere I have reached my prime,
Or drunk the strengthening cordial of life's gall.
The lightning's stroke or the fierce tempest blast
Which fells the green tree to the earth to-day
Is kinder than the calm that lets it last,
Unhappy witness of its own decay.
May no man ever look on me and say,
'She lives, but all her usefulness is past. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Without sense of direction, efforts land nowhere. ~ Saru Singhal

I think, in terms of corporate philosophy, I've always believed that you've got to treat people in a very very egalitarian manner in the sense I like to treat people on a one-to-one basis. And I like people to take on a lot of responsibilities because I think with a sense of responsibility also comes a sense of purpose. ~ Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

You cannot fulfill a purpose; it is like a guiding star on the horizon- forever pursued but never reached. ~ James Collins

The inadequacy of the purely purpose-oriented form is revealed for what it is-a monotonous, impoverished boring practicality. ~ Theodor Adorno

The future of profit is purpose. ~ Simon Mainwaring

Most of us inherit one shame or another. [...] I met a guy named Mike during my travels in Alaska. We've stayed in touch. He's blond and blue-eyed, and does not fit comfortably in most chairs and beds because he's six foot nine. He's often embarrassed by his height and sometimes tells people he's six foot eight. He stoops on purpose. Once, while waiting to be seated at a restaurant, he and I stood in front of a full-length mirror. His reflection wasn't all there. His head was cut off. There were so many ways to be invisible. ~ Alex Tizon

What I have learnt is that it is important to pursue your passion more than your legacy; if you have a passion with a purpose, then everything else fits in. ~ Nita Ambani

I hate the word lesbian; it tells you nothing; its only purpose is to inflame. ~ Jeanette Winterson

You want me to be rational. The most rational thing is the machine. Go to the machines. All their separate parts work together. But I live with no purpose, irrationally. ~ Jonas Mekas

The Purpose Effect results in a higher calling, where individuals and organizations seek to improve society to benefit all stakeholders. ~ Dan Pontefract

It's Much Better To Be Driven By An Inner Sense Of Purpose Than By The Outer Flashy Success". ~ Venugopal Acharya

But you could not blame someone for dying. For leaving on purpose, perhaps, as her brother had left her and her parents, but not for dying, the power over which was surely beyond the grasp of any mortal human. ~ Cassandra Clare

Sometimes when we go through transitions, we aren't aware of the impact they have on us. Stress, doubt, and even depression commonly result from being moved or thrown out of your comfort zone, however easy the transition is. You may have a strong sense of purpose, high hopes, strong faith, a powerful sense of self-worth, a positive attitude, the courage to face your fears, and the ability to bounce back from failures. But if you fall apart when faced with the inevitable changes that life brings, you will never move forward. We ~ Nick Vujicic

Your life purpose is not just one thing, nor just what you love to do, nor a role, nor a legacy you leave. Your life purpose is who you are 24/7. ~ Diana Dentinger

Every relationship that we have in our lives - our contact with each person, place, and event - serves a very special, if yet to be realized purpose: They are mirrors that can serve to show us things about ourselves that can be realized in no other way. ~ Guy Finley

Ah, many a one has started forth with hope and purpose high; Has fought throughout a weary life, and passed all pleasure by; Has burst all flowery chains by which men aye have been enthralled; Has been stone-deaf to voices sweet, that softly, sadly called; Has scorned the flashing goblet with the bubbles on its brim; Has turned his back on jewelled hands that madly beckoned him; Has, in a word, condemned himself to follow out his plan By stern and lonely labor
and has died, a conquered man! ~ George Arnold

If God is your coach, you score the most amazing and unbelievable goals ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The Bible tells us that Jesus Christ came to do three things. He came to have my past forgiven, you get a purpose for living and a home in Heaven. ~ Rick Warren

We fear that we are ugly, that we cannot succeed and we are afraid of something ~ Sunday Adelaja

Life is difficult. ~ M. Scott Peck

Never become bitter just because you were rejected by men ~ Sunday Adelaja

Dubai,I think is a big bore - a city deliberately built to appeal to tourism, and only built for that purpose, and not possessing a valid culture or history of its own. ~ Arthur Frommer

They dragged the air mattress up to the widow's walk and eventually figured out how it was supposed to inflate, but Lucas had to read the instructions in Spanish because the English ones were nearly incomprehensible. Hilariously so.
"Insert mouth to the purpose inflation," Helen whispered.
...
"Expel lung into inflator tube," Lucas whispered back. "That sounds like it would hurt. ~ Josephine Angelini

Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

By the next war, the message will have got through.
There will never be another war.
There will always be wars.
Men couldn't be so stupid, John! After all this? Isn't the only real purpose of our being here to teach them that lesson - how bloody useless and pointless the whole thing is?
Men are naturally stupid and they do not learn from experience. ~ Susan Hill

A lot of my video work is super lo-fi on purpose. I'm not trying to become technically super proficient. The only thing I'm interested in becoming technically proficient on is my alto saxophone. ~ Matana Roberts

Look at these cliffs! Some are abrupt and unpredictable. Some other are soft and with smooth slopes. Yet, they all have the same purpose: either to lure you and bring you down or to teach you how to stand up, firmly, on their rims while contemplating the horizon. Here, you have the perfect vision of the abyss beneath. the majesty of the skies above, or the endlessness of the horizon in front; but you can't see what's behind, and that's how it should be! What's the point in contemplating something that you already know and lived? Haven't your coming here made you know the paths on which you walked? That's why, what belongs to the past should remain there. The past gives us the lessons. We do not need a heavier luggage than this! ~ Irina Serban

He described the securities - called Abacus - to a girlfriend: I had some input into the creation of this product (which by the way is a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself 'Well, what if we created a "thing," which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?').15 ~ John Kay

If ever the adventure proves tiring, or you lose sight of your dream, look to the west at sunset. There, on days when the skies are clear, you might see upon the horizon a thin layer of amber mist. When it appears, you will know its purpose: it is the mist of believing. ~ Fennel Hudson

She saw that he had singled her out from the three, as a woman is singled out in such cases, for no reasoned purpose of further acquaintance, but in commonplace obedience to conjunctive orders from headquarters, unconsciously received by unfortunate men when the last intention of their lives is to be occupied with the feminine. ~ Thomas Hardy

He had given each a code and procedure to follow should any kind of disaster arise, be it a siege of the city or a revolt from within. This revolt fulfilled the second contingency. He would not have to gather everyone himself. He need only contact a couple of them and they would pass along the information through their prescribed channels. All of them would follow various prepared routes to meet in the secret passageways below the palace, created for this very purpose. Down there, they could weather the danger in the city above. They even had food stores which stayed well-preserved in the cool and dry environment. ~ Brian Godawa

Let no act be done without purpose. ~ Marcus Aurelius

You are good at something for a reason. God designed you this way, on purpose. It isn't fake or a fluke or small. These are the mind and heart and hands and voice you've been given, so use them. ~ Jen Hatmaker

The whole purpose of maintaining your power in government is to make sure that you stay in government. You stay in government by finding out who is liable to be against you. To do that, you try and put your finger into every single pie that is available to you. ~ David Lloyd

I've been abducted and probed in the anus.
On purpose. ~ Tom DeLonge

It is our souls which are the everlastingness of God's purpose in this earth. ~ William Mountford

...We are truly human when we live for a purpose far above ourselves; but most people prefer to identify with an entity for the sake of belonging; thereby subjecting themselves to the spirit of collective selfishness that is only found in groups... ~ Janvier Chouteu-Chando

A dream is such a driving force, it drives you to your future, to your purpose, to your destiny so you can't afford to let go to your dream. ~ Euginia Herlihy

The best things in life make you sweaty. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

The purpose of democracy - supplanting old belief in the necessary absoluteness of establish'd dynastic rulership, temporal, ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only security against chaos, crime, and ignorance - is, through many transmigrations, and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures ~ Walt Whitman

You see, there is no more purpose or meaning in the world than you put into it. ~ Hans Reichenbach

I'd been looking around the world for clues as to what other countries were doing right, but the important distinctions were not about spending or local control or curriculum; none of that mattered very much. Policies mostly worked in the margins. The fundamental difference was a psychological one. The education superpowers believed in rigor. People in these countries agreed on the purpose of school: School existed to help students master complex academic material. Other things mattered, too, but nothing mattered as much. ~ Amanda Ripley

Don't worry, even if I don't tell them, my little brother will. I'm pretty sure he was born for the sole purpose of making my life a living hell," Seth muttered, then noticing that his parents' friends were drawing near, rushed off to hide. ~ Ada Adams

You must take the trouble discover a worthy purpose for being on this ever green earth. ~ Saidi Mdala

Oh how the world reflected you in its unending streams of atoms, churning atoms out of which significance beamed
significance, but not purpose. ~ Lydia Millet

We should get rid of these restricting attitudes and system of beliefs in order to remove obstacles in our way to the achievements of our goals and revealing our potential ~ Sunday Adelaja

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

Simplicity, clarity, singleness: These are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy as they are also the marks of great art. They seem to be the purpose of God for his whole creation. ~ Richard Holloway

I remember something that my granny told me once about these misty mountains of ours they call the Smokies. Granny said God hung that haze on purpose, to hide these hills from the folks up in Heaven who was raised here, so they wouldn't look down and be homesick. ~ Vicki Lane

Every few days the sea delivers us gifts, and I am convinced that there is something of the divine nature in this process. Often I have prayed for a jacket, a bucket, or a handsaw, but instead I find one single flip-flop. Many times it has left my heart bitter, but then I find some useful purpose for my found treasure. Maybe the sea doesn't give me what I want, but what I need. ~ Jennifer Arnett

The discovery of Viagra was a similar story. Initially, the drug had been tested as a treatment for chest pain (angina), and for that purpose it was a failure. Then patients started reporting a curious side effect. (Imagine those awkward conversations: "Doc, my chest still hurts ... but, um, I've been noticing an effect somewhere else ... ") ~ Chip Heath

The purpose of poetry is not to provide a solution or, say, to stop a war or prevent millions of people from dying, etc. Poetry can never do that. Poetry is all about keeping the dialogue alive. Poetry must bring forth, time and again, issues that need attention and are intentionally or unintentionally forgotten. ~ Abhijit Sarmah

Sometimes people have no idea what drives you & the unlimited gears you've developed inside you, so they try to teach you how to steer. ~ Curtis Tyrone Jones

The spectacle of a great, solvent government paying a fictitious price for gold it did not want and did not need and doing it on purpose to debase the value of its own paper currency was one to astonish the world. ~ Garet Garrett

Christianity is sustained by the knowledge that the object of man's life on earth is his development as an eternal being. Therefore, none of his expressions of life can be an end in itself, but must serve a higher purpose than the earthly life and happiness of the individual - or even than that of the race. ~ Ellen Key

A purpose in life acts like a directional signal for the brain. ~ Ilchi Lee