Quotes About Purpose

I'd argue that everybody wants to do something that matters

What a useless life I had led. Often enough in hours of normal health I had debated the value of writing books. What did one accomplish by writing, what influence did one exert, what improvements did one effect?

Even in The Liberal Imagination, a book with a clear polemical purpose, ambivalence about the educative value of literature lurks in the background of many of the essays.

Freud showed, too, how the mind, in one of its parts, could work without logic, yet not without that directing purpose, that control of intent from which, perhaps it might be said, logic springs. For the unconscious mind works without the syntactical conjunctions which are logic's essence.

Knowing who you are is vastly more important than knowing where you are going or even what you can do. Because he is your Creator, God has quite a bit to say to you about who you are. And who you truly are carries within it the revelation of what you could be.

We do not live by the violence of a sword, but the time has come to live by the power of one.

When God decided this world needed you, He created a village to surround you, and His presence is ever with you.

Rather than compete for what was never meant for you . . . you would have the energy to discover what is yours.

For truly a dark and murderous enemy has already realized who you are. He knows your potential and is systematically trying to undermine your future. I believe that the attacks on your life have much more to do with who you might be in the future than who you have been in the past.

How many parents have lost the hearts of their children because they forgot why they had them? It was never to control them but to provide an environment in which they would flourish. How many couples have lost their marriages because they forgot why they were together? They fight against each other rather than for their love. Do we grasp and wrestle with others for their roles because we lose sight of our own?

Dad, I don't know why I'm still alive... Because God took pity on me, Kimberly. Because without you, I think I would've gone insane.

I don't know who I am," I say. "No one does. Everyone spends their lives figuring that out, even people who've never been kidnapped.

The question, O me! so sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life? That you are here - that life exists and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

The wise person doesn't ask, "What have I achieved?" but rather, "What have I contributed?"

We can choose this moment of crisis to ask and answer the big questions of society's evolution — like, what do we want to be when we grow up?

The most perfect society is that whose purpose is the universal and supreme happiness.

For an individual as well as for a society, there is a gulf between merely living and living worthily.

The best school in the world will scarcely save a boy who hates the school and the purpose it serves and the society that created it.

If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure, that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.

Churches are having a limited impact on society because they fail to understand that the goal of the church is not the church itself but the kingdom.

It is more important to find out what you are giving to society than to ask what is the right means of livelihood.

I will create value for society, rather than extract it.

The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society - more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.