Raison Quotes

Each alter personality had a common goal and raison d'etre, namely my survival. They didn't all realize that though, and so were at odds with each other much of the time. So I continued to be fragmented and divided. ~ Carolyn Bramhall

We are women. We talk. We all do. I love to talk. It's my reason for being. No. It's my raison d'etre. Now that is fucking classy. Not everyone has one. A classy one. Anyway. ~ Suzy Valtsioti

Everything is a subject. Every subject has a rhythm. To feel it is the raison detre. The photograph is a fixed moment of such a raison detre, which lives on in itself. ~ Andre Kertesz

Performing, not rehearsing, is a dancer's raison d'etre, and I've been lucky to 'etre' in some extraordinary places - Cuba, Paris, Mongolia. In particular, a two-week stint in Greece leaps to mind. We danced in the Acropolis's Herodes Atticus amphitheater, once a venue for gladiator spectacles. ~ Sascha Radetsky

Most shows find themselves descending into sentimentality or earnestness at some point but, with 'Community,' the joke is always on. ~ Miranda Raison

Judge no one until you know their circumstances. No matter how awful they seemed, sometimes there was a valid reason for their behaviour. Granted, some people were just mean and corrupt, but not always. Many people were just in pain, and by acting out, they were only trying to protect themselves from being hurt more. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

My mum lives near Holkham Bay in Norfolk, and with my dad by the coast in Suffolk, I spend quite a bit of time by the sea. ~ Miranda Raison

I expertly angled my raison bran to accomodate the g-forces. ~ John Green

It is necessary to be focused. This is the raison d'etre of career. ~ Frederick Lenz

I haven't done as much proper travelling as I'd like to have done. However, I know how important the weather is for my mood and spirits. ~ Miranda Raison

I saw only the reality of his destiny, which he had known
how to follow with unfaltering footsteps, that life begun in humble
surroundings, rich in generous enthusiasms, in friendship, love, war
in
all the exalted elements of romance. ~ Joseph Conrad

Securing, not prohibiting, the orderly transfer of wealth from A to B, based on wealth differentials, is the raison d'être of the [New Deal programs]. The contrast between the modern progressive and classical liberal agendas could not be more explicit. ~ Richard A. Epstein

Life has no meaning. It doesn't need a meaning. A meaning is an arbitrary thought formulation that we affix to it because we are in the mood. Life is its own raison d'etre. ~ Frederick Lenz

My favourite programme of all time is 'Weeds'; the first three or four series are perfection. ~ Miranda Raison

About her family she had taken a superior view. She considered them somewhat childlike since her power over them in the form of language had given her the privilege of viewing them in this way. And her distance from them, as the distance of all translators from their subjects, allowed her to see that so much of the raison d'etre of their lives was taken up negotiating their way around the small objects of foreignness laced in their way. Either they could not see the larger space of commonality or it was denied them. ~ Dionne Brand

I'm a bad traveller because I suffer from travel sickness. ~ Miranda Raison

The tragic irony of modern anti-fascism is that the more successful it is, the more its raison d'etre is called into question. Its greatest successes lie in hypothetical limbo: How many murderous fascist movements have been nipped in the bud over the past 70 years by antifa groups before their violence could metastasize? We will never know--and that's a very good thing indeed. ~ Mark Bray

In high school, in college, she was encouraged again and again to find her passion-a reason to get out of bed and breathe. In her experience, few people ever found that raison d'etre.
What teachers and professors never told her was about the dark side of finding your purpose. The part where it consumes you. Where it becomes a destroyer of relationship and happiness. And still, she wouldn't trade it. This is the only person she knows how to be. ~ Blake Crouch

Education in my family was not merely emphasized, it was our raison d'etre. ~ Steven Chu

Bree shot to her feet and glared at him.
"Look all you want, Brianna. That was the deal, remember? Until Arturo is found, I'm not leaving you alone."
Alessandro stared down at her with immovable stubbornness.
"How am I gonna explain you to my grandfather? And what if the rest of my family is there?"
"Hello O'Reiley family, you remember Alessandro, the father of my child, the man that I love, the light of my life, ma raison d'être…"
"Are you done?" Bree asked cocking an eyebrow.
"Depends, are you quite ready to go? Look, you can explain that I'm there for answers too. My father's involvement in this vendetta directly influences my own future and that of my child. ~ E. Jamie

I try to find stories that I would think that everyone would find interesting, and just a good entertaining story, and then if I can find a story that has a raison d'etre behind it that I feel is important then that's the best for me. ~ Norman Jewison

Filming 'Doctor Who' is so incredibly different to 'Spooks.' Near to the surface, there's quite a silly atmosphere. A lot of the times, you're on the verge of giggles because it's so over the top. ~ Miranda Raison

The eternal raison d'etre of America is in its being the "sweet land of liberty". Should a land so dreamed into existence, so degenerate through material prosperity as to become what its European critics, with too much justice, have scornfully renamed it the "Land of the Dollar" - such a development will be one of the sorriest conclusions of history, and the most colossal disillusionment that has ever happened to mankind. ~ Frank Norris

The Faces of Love
Love is a muse for the poet;
a gift for the thankful;
a remedy for the heartbroken;
a game for the powerful;
a tragic comedy for the poor;
a raison d'etre for the non-believer;
a proof of God's presence for the faithful. ~ Beryl Dov

To Mr. Blot, who went through life an unconscious example of the raison d'être of the British Empire, a shipwreck was merely one of the many things to be ignored. His was a calming influence. ~ Cornelia Otis Skinner

They (the novelists) became the voice of the citizen against the ubiquitous raison d'état, which reappeared endlessly to justify everything from unjust laws and the use of child labour to incompetent generalship and inhuman conditions on warships.
The themes they popularized have gradually turned into the laws which, for all their flaws, have improved the state of man. ~ John Ralston Saul

How recognisable, how familiar to us, is the man so beautifully portrayed in the 'groundwork', who confronted even with Christ turns away to consider the judgement of his own conscience and to hear the voice of his own reason...This man is with us still, free, independent, lovely, powerful, rational, responsible, brave, the hero of so many novels and books of moral philosophy. The raison detre of this attractive but misleading creature is not far to seek. He is the offspring of the age of science, confidently rational, and yet increasingly aware of his alienation from the material universe which his discoveries reveal... his alienation from the material universe which his discoveries reveal..his alienation is without cure... It is not such a long step from Kant to Neitzsche to existentialism, and the Anglo-Saxon ethical doctrines which in some ways closely resemble it.... In fact, Kant's man had already received a glorious incarnation nearly a century earlier in the work of Milton: his proper name is Lucifer. ~ Iris Murdoch

I was genuinely frightened when I saw the Daleks. These ridiculous-looking things absolutely get to the core of you when you're standing in front of one. ~ Miranda Raison

Psychic awareness leads to a true perception not only of events, but just of life itself. It is its own raison d'etre. ~ Frederick Lenz

Instead of the concrete individual, you have the names of organizations and, at the highest point, the abstract idea of the State as the principle of political reality. The moral responsibility of the individual is then inevitably replaced by the policy of the State (raison d'etat). Instead of moral and mental differentiation of the individual, you have public welfare and the raising of the living standard. The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life) no longer lie in the individual development but in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside and consists in the execution of an abstract idea which ultimately tends to attract all life to itself. The individual is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how he should live his own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed, and educated as a social unit, accommodated in the appropriate housing unit, and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses. The rulers, in their turn, are just as much social units as the ruled, and are distinguished only by the fact they are specialized mouthpieces of State doctrine. They do not need to be personalities capable of judgment, but thoroughgoing specialists who are unusable outside their line of business. State policy decides what shall be taught and studied. ~ C.G. Jung

Eliza's constant harping didn't even get to Martha, although it sometimes seemed that Eliza's raison d'etre was to urinate on Martha's parade. ~ Adele Parks

America stands before the world as an impetuous void, a fatality without substance. Nothing prepared her for hegemony; yet she tends toward it, not without a certain hesitation. Unlike the other nations which have had to pass through a whole series of humiliations and defeats, she has known till now only the sterility of an uninterrupted good fortune. If, in the future, everything should continue to go as well, her appearance on the scene will have been an accident without influence. Those who preside over her destiny, those who take her interests to heart, should prepare her for bad times; in order to cease being a superficial monster, she requires an ordeal of major scope. Perhaps she is not far from one now. Having lived, hitherto, outside hell, she is preparing to descend into it. If she seeks a destiny for herself, she will find it only on the ruins of all that was her raison d'être. ~ Emil M. Cioran

Officially she was there to liaise with me on the case, but really she was there for the wide-screen TV, takeaways and the unresolved sexual tension. ~ Ben Aaronovitch

A lot of shows peak after a series and never get it back, but 'Breaking Bad' keeps the tension up all the time. ~ Miranda Raison

Facts and information are the nourishment, the lifeblood, the raison d'etre, and also the bane and despair of librarians and researchers. ~ Kee Malesky

What was once a cottage industry dedicated to the discovery and development of new voices and works has become instead the raison d'etre for many a playwright's existence ... And since readings have become playwrights' main source of exposure, the nature of playwriting has changed to fit readings' needs. Investigation into what is eminently theatrical has been substituted - more and more these days - by what can simply come across and read well. ~ Caridad Svich

I do read on holiday, but it tends to be very lowbrow. I'm into really camp biographies, and I'm a shameless fan of Jilly Cooper. ~ Miranda Raison

The horsewife! The very basebone of the American plethora! The horsewife! Without whom the entire structure of civilian life would crumble! Without the horsewife, the whole raison d'être of our existences would be reduced, in a twinkling, to that brute level of brutality for which we so rightly reproach the filthy animals. Were it not for her enormous purchasing power and the heedless gaiety with which it is exercised, we would still be going around dressed in skins probably, with no big ticket items to fill the empty voids, in our homes and in our hearts. The horsewife! Nut and numen of our intersubjectivity. The horsewife! The chiefest ornament on the golden tree of human suffering! ~ Donald Barthelme

My idea of philosophy is that if it is not relevant to human problems, if it does not tell us how we can go about eradicating some of the misery in this world, then it is not worth the name of philosophy. I think Socrates made a very profound statement when he asserted that the raison d'etre of philosophy is to teach us proper living. In this day and age 'proper living' means liberation from the urgent problems of poverty, economic necessity and indoctrination, mental oppression. ~ Angela Davis

Verticality is ensured by the polarity of cellar and attic, the marks of which are so deep that, in a way, they open up two very different perspectives for a phenomenology of the imagination. Indeed, it is possible, almost without commentary, to oppose the rationality of the roof to the irrationality of the cellar. A roof tells its raison d'etre right away: it gives mankind shelter from the rain and sun he fears. Geographers are constantly reminding us that, in every country, the slope of the roofs is one of the surest indications of the climate. We "understand" the slant of a roof. Even a dreamer dreams rationally; for him, a pointed roof averts rain clouds. Up near the roof all our thoughts are clear. In the attic it is a pleasure to see the bare rafters of the strong framework. Here we participate in the carpenter's solid geometry.
As for the cellar, we shall no doubt find uses for it .. It will be rationalized and its conveniences enumerated. But it is first and foremost the dark entity of the house, the one that partakes of subterranean forces. When we dream there, we are in harmony with the irrationality of the depths. ~ Gaston Bachelard

Although the art world reveres the unconventional, it is rife with conformity. Artists make work that "looks like art" and behave in ways that enhance stereotypes. Curators pander to the expectations of their peers and their museum boards. Collectors run in herds to buy work by a handful of fashionable painters. Critics stick their finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing so as to "get it right". Originality is not always rewarded, but some people take real risks and innovate, which gives a raison d'être to the rest. ~ Sarah Thornton

Rail longer than train cars ; and the hope than our reasons. (Rail plus long que les wagons ; - Et l'espoir que nos raisons.) ~ Charles De Leusse

There is something deeply attractive, at least to quite a lot of people, about squalor, misery, and vice. They are regarded as more authentic, and certainly more exciting, than cleanliness, happiness, and virtue. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

..for a man ( Roger Scruton ) whose calling and raison d'etre is that difficult business - not just telling the truth but finding out what the truth would be like if we told it - it was a huge blow to be exposed as a lickspittle of tobacco giants. If your job is enquiry, you cannot accept money for providing the answers before the question has been examined. ~ A. N. Wilson

TV's 'real' agenda is to be 'liked,' because if you like what you're seeing, you'll stay tuned. TV is completely unabashed about this; it's its sole raison. ~ David Foster Wallace