quotations about purpose
"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
Cat's Cradle
I realized then that even though I was a tiny speck in an infinite cosmos, a blip on the timeline of eternity, I was not without purpose.
R. J. ANDERSON
Ultraviolet
If you have a strong purpose in life, you don't have to be pushed. Your passion will drive you there.
ROY T. BENNETT
The Light in the Heart
If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.
SENECA
Seneca's Morals
Nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose -- a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
MARY SHELLEY
Frankenstein
If you have no aim, you need not worry about the means.
FAUSTO CERCIGNANI
attributed, Simply Transcribed
The purpose of life is not to be happy--but to matter.
LEO ROSTEN
attributed, Quaker Life, 1966
Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
letter to Thurlow Weed, March 15, 1865
Having purpose and vision during retirement is one of the most important determinants of mental, social, spiritual, and physical well-being in later life.
HAROLD G. KOENIG
Purpose and Power in Retirement
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.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
Twenty Conversations with Borges
Plato defined a slave as one who accepts from another the purposes which control his conduct. This condition obtains even where there is no slavery in the legal sense. It is found wherever men are engaged in activity which is socially serviceable, but whose service they do not understand and have no personal interest in.
JOHN DEWEY
Democracy and Education
I find the greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving; to reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it--but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
attributed, Plumbers, Gas and Steam Fitters Journal, 1914
Though all things in society as well as in the universe are said to have a purpose, there do exist here below certain beings whose purpose and utility seem inexplicable.
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
The Vicar of Tours
Purpose ... is held to be most closely connected with virtue, and to be a better token of our character than are even our acts.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics