Quotes About Purpose

We're up against the conventional thinking that says your ability to lead as president comes from longevity in Washington or proximity to the White House. But we know that real leadership is about candor and judgment and the ability to rally Americans from all walks of life around a common purpose, a higher purpose.

What I would say to my successor is that it is important not just to shoot but to aim

We are made for this moment, and we will seize it-so long as we seize it together.

Look. You can't plan out your life. What you have to do is first discover your passion—what you really care about.

Finally, I wanted to tell a more personal story that might inspire young people considering a life in public service; how my career in politics really started with a search for a place to fit in. A way to explain the different strands of my mixed up heritage and how it was only by hitching my wagon to something larger than myself that I was ultimately able to locate a community and purpose for my life.

It was only by hitching my wagon to something larger than myself that I was ultimately able to locate a community and purpose for my life.

How many of us are tested in that way, asked to risk careers we've long dreamed of in the service of some greater good?

that it wasn't just an exercise in vanity or ambition but rather a part of an unbroken chain of progress.

how my career in politics really started with a search for a place to fit in, a way to explain the different strands of my mixed-up heritage, and how it was only by hitching my wagon to something larger than myself that I was ultimately able to locate a community and purpose for my life.

The fact that they were still engaged in the fight and, despite setbacks and sorrow, hadn't succumbed to bitterness showed me that I had no cause to be tired. I felt renewed in my conviction that I was where I was supposed to be and doing what needed to be done

work is essential.

You seem like a nice enough guy. Why do you want

Because, you know, contrary to the song of a great American master, we're generally not born to run. Most of us are born to run a little bit and go back home.

That's why people become involved in organizing—because they think they'll get something out of it.

It felt sometimes as if I'd been caught in a tide, carried along by the current of other people's expectations before I'd clearly defined my own.

Believe in something larger than yourself.

It was my compass; a direction I could point myself in every day and say this is who I am now, this is what I do. The store is your compass.

If you look around you at the physical universe, you will see that it's nature is growth. Everything from the cells in your body to the planets orbiting the sun are constantly growing, constantly changing, constantly evolving. Nothing stays still. Nothing remains the same. So think about it - why would your life be the exception? Why would you be the only thing that exists in all of creation whose purpose isn't to grow?

you can't go around telling people, 'I'm on a mission to discover the purpose of life.' Not if you're hoping to prolong the conversation.

Just as layoffs were making a mockery of the team concept, employees were urged to find camaraderie and a sense of collective purpose at the microlevel of the team. And the less teamlike the overall organization became with the threat of continuous downsizing, the more management insisted on individual devotion to these largely fictional units.

But that isn't all!" Caris broke in, distressed at the sadness in the old man's voice. "There is more in the world than—than money in the pockets of the merchants and machines to make things to sell! Isn't there?

She had said once that to be with him was all she had ever wanted. But he knew that if he died tomorrow, Starhawk would find something else to do—

Your dreams, what you hope for and all that, it's not separate from your life. It grows right up out of it.

I've about decided that's the main thing that separates happy people from the other people: the feeling that you're a practical item, with a use, like a sweater or a socket wrench.