Purpose quotes
3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside purpose — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"It's too presumptuous and naïve to think you can change society by a photograph or anything else... I equate that with propaganda; I think that's a lower rank of purpose."
"It cannot suffice to invent new machines, new regulations, new institutions. It is necessary to change and improve our understanding of the true purpose of what we are and what we do in the world. Only such a new understanding will allow us to develop new models of behavior, new scales of values and goals, and thereby invest the global regulations, treaties and institutions with a new spirit and meaning."
"Instead of stubbornly attempting to use surrealism for purposes of subversion, it is necessary to try to make of surrealism something as solid, complete and classic as the works of museums."
"My mother told me once that we can't survive alone, but even if we could, we wouldn't want to. Without a faction we have no purpose and no reason to live."
"Do your work, but do your thing."
"No clowns were funny. That was the whole purpose of a clown. People laughed at clowns, but only out of nervousness. The point of clowns was that, after watching them, anything else that happened seemed enjoyable"
"There are some that only employ words for the purpose of disguising their thoughts."
"But for what purpose was the earth formed?" asked Candide. "To drive us mad," replied Martin."
"There is such a thing as perfection...and our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth....Each of us is in truth an unlimited idea of freedom. Everything that limits us we have to put aside."
"I paint for the sole purpose of magnifying the privilege of being alive."
"It’s not about the money. Its about creating a business out of your life’s purpose and mission."
"He whose ranks are united in purpose will be victorious."
"It was our Creator who led us through the stages of evolution, from the animal state to the human. His purpose was to make us intelligent and aware, so that we might know Him."
"Consider We are born Not with purpose, But with potential."
"I would never use a long word, even, where a short one would answer the purpose."
"No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself."
"If you have no major purpose, you are drifting toward certain failure."
"To be happy is not the purpose of our being, but to deserve happiness."
"When one pays a visit it is for the purpose of wasting other people's time, not one's own."
"Above all be of single aim; have a legitimate and useful purpose, and devote yourself unreservedly to it."
