Theme
Purpose
Meaning, calling, and why we do what we do.
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Verified quotes about purpose
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“A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives”
“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life”
“A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself”
“A system must have an aim. Without an aim, there is no system”
“All men by nature desire to know”
“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players”
“An artist's duty is to reflect the times”
“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death”
“As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is”
“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”
“Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact”
“Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness”
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for”
“Do not only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine”
“Don't aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it”
“Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story”
“Existence precedes essence”
“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing”
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat”
“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do”
“Follow your bliss”
“For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs”
“For without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods”
“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life”
“Hitch your wagon to a star”
“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly”
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world”
“I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success...Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything”
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived”
“If a man does not know to what port he is steering, no wind is favourable to him”
“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted”
“If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain”
“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours”
“If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place”
“If we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how”
“If you let money pile up, it starts to stink. But if you spread it around then it can do a lot of good”
“In His will is our peace”
“in the zone”
“It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well”
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner”
“It's life that matters, nothing but life — the process of discovering, the everlasting process”
“Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'”
“Man is condemned to be free”
“Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall”
“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose”
“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path”
“Not all those who wander are lost”
“One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world”
“Strong, deeply rooted desire is the starting point of all achievement”
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
“That is happiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great”
“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable”
“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams”
“The future rewards those who press on. I don't have time to feel sorry for myself. I don't have time to complain. I'm going to press on”
“The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities”
“The man who dies rich dies disgraced”
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”
“The mountains are calling and I must go”
“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for”
“The only way to do great work is to love what you do”
“The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine”
“The purpose of an organization is to enable common men to do uncommon things”
“The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way”
“The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life”
“The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so”
“The unexamined life is not worth living”
“There is no such thing as society”
“There is no wealth but life”
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure”
“There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer”
“There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all”
“There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm themselves at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke coming from the chimney”
“They also serve who only stand and wait”
“They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself”
“To be, or not to be, that is the question”
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”
“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us”
“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special”
“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard”
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started”
“We're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself”
“What a man can be, he must be”
“When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind”
“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it”
“Without music, life would be a mistake”
“Work is love made visible”
“You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want”
“You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say”
“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life”
“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does”
“Adventure is worthwhile in itself”
“All compounded things are subject to decay. Strive with diligence”
“At a football club, there's a holy trinity - the players, the manager and the supporters”
“Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning”
“Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things”
“Every kid around the world who plays soccer wants to be Pelé. I have a great responsibility to show them not just how to be like a soccer player, but how to be like a man”
“Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart”
“Find out who you are and do it on purpose”
“God gave me my money”
“God gets you to the plate, but once you're there you're on your own”
“I am a slow walker, but I never walk back”
“I was born for soccer, just as Beethoven was born for music”
“I would like to be remembered as a person who wanted to be free”
“If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door”
“If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's”
“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it”
“If you're not ready to die for it, take the word 'freedom' out of your vocabulary”
“It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age”
“It matters if you don't just give up”
“Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do”
“Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope”
“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm”
“One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night”
“Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable”
“The mamba mentality is a constant quest to try to be better today than you were yesterday”
“The road to the Olympics, leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond New York or Moscow, ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads — in the end — to the best within us”
“The rocket worked perfectly, except for landing on the wrong planet”
“The story of the human race is the story of men and women selling themselves short”
“The way to recover the meaning of life and the worthwhileness of life is to recover the power of experience, to have impulse voices from within, and to be able to hear these impulse voices from within”
“Things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up”
“We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community”
“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us”
“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make”
“Wherever you stand, be the soul of that place”
“You are all a lost generation”
“You Are Only Interested in Art and I Am Only Interested in Money”
“You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water”
“You were born with wings. Why prefer to crawl through life?”
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Don’t get caught out
Commonly shared about purpose — but misattributed
Popular purpose lines that get pinned on the wrong name. If you use one, credit it correctly.
“A Ship in Harbor Is Safe, But that Is Not What Ships Are Built For”
ReallyJohn A. Shedd · not Albert Einstein
“Only One Who Attempts the Absurd Is Capable of Achieving the Impossible”
ReallyMiguel de Unamuno · not Albert Einstein
“And the Sea Will Grant Each Man New Hope, As Sleep Brings Dreams of Home”
ReallyLarry Ferguson · not Christopher Columbus
“If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate”
ReallyUnknown · not Richard Feynman
“Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it”
ReallyUnknown · not Richard Feynman
“To me, there are three things everyone should do every day. Number one is laugh. Number two is think. And number three, you should have your emotions moved to tears”
ReallyJim Valvano · but not in these words
“Either write something worth reading or do something worth the writing”
ReallyBenjamin Franklin · but not in these words
“If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space”
ReallyThomas Carlyle · not Carl Sagan
“Successful people never worry about what others are doing”
ReallyUnknown · not Plato
“To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing”
ReallyMartin Luther · not Martin Luther King Jr.
“Life Is Too Important To Be Taken Seriously”
ReallyOscar Wilde · not G. K. Chesterton
“Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you find that you have accomplished a purpose”
ReallyAnne Sullivan · not Helen Keller
“A Day Without Laughter Is a Day Wasted”
ReallyNicolas Chamfort · not Charlie Chaplin
“Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking”
ReallyUnknown · not W. B. Yeats
“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls”
ReallyJoseph Campbell · but not in these words
“He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how”
ReallyFriedrich Nietzsche · not Viktor Frankl
“If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life”
ReallyAbraham Maslow · but not in these words
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose”
ReallyViktor Frankl · but not in these words