This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"You are a self-organizing system in an invisible field of energy organized by your purpose and a stream of continuous information. Information is the nutrient of a self-organizing system… It is by knowing yourself that your purpose is revealed." - Carol Adrienne
"The purpose of art is not a rarefied, intellectual distillate - it is life, intensified, brilliant life." - Alain Arias-Misson
"You will to believe that because you are an individual expression of God there is purpose, real and meaningful in your life, and you will to believe that to achieve this purpose you are also equipped with the talent and potential necessary for its achievement. Will to believe it!... It is the originality in each of us and not our uniformity which gives life its deepest meaning." - Marcus Bach, fully James Marcus Bach
"A belief that we were created by God for a purpose does not then provide us with the kind of adequate account of life’s meaning we might expect. Religions are not clear about what this purpose is. The idea that it is to serve God seems deeply implausible and contrary to most conceptions of God’s nature." - Julian Baggini
"A goal-oriented life locates the purposed of life in the achievement of a goal, which is necessarily tied to a discrete moment in time… But we also exist across time, and when our life’s goals are fixed so narrowly on moments that are only briefly the present, we fail to do justice to the enduring aspect of human life… Moments slip away and so if life’s purpose is tied to moments. Although moments can play a part, in order to find a purpose which is truly fulfilling, we also need to find a way of living which is worthwhile in itself. Life is rarely an undiluted pleasure that our own attitudes are themselves important to our sense of well-being." - Julian Baggini
"If we see life’s purpose as the achievement of future goals, several problems arise. If we are mortal, the problem is simply that there will come a time when we have no future. Life would end with meaning unfulfilled, since death would eventually rob us of the future where the purposes for our actions lie." - Julian Baggini
"To see altruism itself as the purpose of human life is confuse means and ends. We need to know whether good deeds are essential for life to be meaningful or whether they just comprise one possible road to fulfillment. Helping others cannot be the purpose of life, because helping others is just a means to an end… Altruism is thus not the source of life’s meaning but is something that living a meaningful life requires." - Julian Baggini
"To attribute to a human being a purpose in that sense is not neutral, let alone complimentary: it is offensive. It is degrading for a man to be regarded as merely serving a purpose." - Kurt Baier
"I am doing nothing. I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means." - Alan Bennett
"Predestination to Life is the everlasting purpose of God." - Book of Common Prayer, aka The Book of Common Prayer NULL
"How we view life is ultimately that which gives us meaning, value and purpose… Our worldview determines how we solve these problems: What are we? Where did we come from? What does it mean to be human? What is truth? What is the meaning and purpose of life? Why is there so much evil in the world? How should we live? What happens when we die? Does it matter?" - Joe Boot
"The search for God is a search for the purpose of life and for an unfailing source of eternal value." - Edgar Sheffield Brightman
"An optimist is a believer I the bet, and any man who believes that anything less than the best is the ultimate purpose of God, and so the ultimate possibility of God’s children, has no business to live upon the earth." - Phillips Brooks
"The only way to really know that God made us is to let God remake, regenerate us. The only way to be sure that God gave us our physical life is to let Him give us the spiritual life which shall declare for the physical life an adequate and worthy purpose." - Phillips Brooks
"You must ask yourself first, what God is. You must see how at the very bottom of His existence, as you conceive of it, lie these two thoughts – purpose and righteousness; how absolutely impossible it is to give God any personality except as the fulfillment of these two qualities – the intelligence that plans in love, and the righteousness that lives in duty." - Phillips Brooks
"The only true happiness comes from squandering yourself for a purpose." - John Mason Brown
"If you have a single powerful purpose, you will have the courage to act on your ideas." - Tom Butler-Bowdon
"To truly serve, purpose must be connected to our unique authenticity. That is why money cannot serve as our purpose. It can be a goal, but not a purpose." - Lenedra J. Carroll
"The whole of evolution is, in reality, a process of self-realizing a moral purpose; the correlation of mind and brain is just the phenomenal aspect of the real correlation of our mind with the divine power which sustains us." - George Alonzo Coe
"Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose." - William Cowper
"The Good must be the beginning and the end even of all evil things. For the Good is the final Purpose of all things, good and bad alike." - Dionysius the Areopagite, aka Saint Dionysius the Areopagite NULL
"Everything on the earth has a purpose, every disease an herb to cure it, and every person a mission. This is the Indian theory of existence." - Mourning Dove or Christal Quintasket, aka Mourning Dove Salish and Christine Quintasket NULL
"A grand meta-narrative is a story of the development and purpose of human history in which we as individual can find a place and play a role. Four basic meta-narratives: (1) Platonic Christian is the idea of life as a journey to another unchanging realm. (2) Hegel’s view that history is the unfolding of the consciousness of God. (3) Marx’s notion of another revolution ushering in a new era. (4) Nietzsche’s idea that there is no “beyond” and that the only meaning comes through creative activities through which we shape a life for ourselves." - Stephen A. Erickson
"Could it be that liberation, not knowledge, is the true end purpose of human life and even its meaning? And might this liberation be achieved through non-rational means: power, sexuality, revolution, resignation, creativity, compassion, or solidarity? If this predicament is not so much ignorance (of something) as bondage (to something), what must we be liberated from, and what are we therefore liberated for?" - Stephen A. Erickson
"Life becomes religious whenever we make it so: when some new light is seen, when some deeper appreciation is felt, when some larger outlook is gained, when some nobler purpose is formed, when some task is well done." - Sophia Lyon Fahs
"There is no greater satisfaction than to be used for a higher purpose. There is no richer way to live than to know you are being of service to others." - Leonard Felder
"Wonder is the attitude of reverence for the infinite values and meaning over God’s purpose and patience in it all." - George Walter Fiske
"The purpose of life on earth is that the soul should grow – So grow! By doing what is right." - Zelda Fitzgerald, born Zelda Sayre
"Moral ambiguity creates mental cramps of various sorts, which lead to reflection, discussion, and argument… Morality resists theoretical unification under either a set of special-purpose rules or single general-purpose rule or principle, such as the categorical imperative or the principle of unity. If this is right, and if it is right because the ends of moral life are plural and heterogeneous in kind and because our practices of moral education rightly reflect this, then we have some greater purchase on why the project of finding a single theoretically satisfying moral theory has failed." - Owen Flanagan
"Disciplining one’s appetite may be the biggest spiritual challenge many of us will face this side of dying. In a world where the future of the planet depends on how many of us will agree to say not to excessive lifestyles, fasting can teach us that physical satisfaction is not the purpose of life." - Nancy Forest-Flier
"Spiritual progress must be slow as long as we are worried, frightened, resentful, sick, or discouraged – and those things can be overcome only through prayer. It is a duty and a joy to help others, wisely, and to leave the world a better place than we found it – and we can do that only through prayer. The more we pray for ourselves the more power will our prayers have for any other purpose whatsoever; so we see that praying for ourselves is the reverse of selfishness – it is truly glorifying God." - Emmet Fox
"The purpose of life is undoubtedly to know oneself. We cannot do it unless we learn to identify ourselves with all that lives. The sum total of that life is God. Hence the necessity of realizing God living within every one of us… The instrument of this knowledge is boundless, selfless service." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"The purpose of growth: to maximize our ability to be loving, joyful and creative… Growth is not just about striving to be better. It is also about enjoying the moment and accepting yourself as you are (knowing that you are or will do your best to change what you can)." - Tom Gregory
"The purpose of the past: to give us pleasant memories, wisdom and lessons to learn, not endless regrets. The purpose of the future: to give us hope and motivation and a place for our dreams. To warn us of possible risks, not for needless worry. The purpose of the present: to help us grow by applying the lessons from our past. To enjoy and appreciate the gift and beauty of life. To do what is necessary to make our dreams come true. To heed the warnings coming from our future." - Tom Gregory
"It means that there is significance in everything that happens in the world, and a heart, a concern, and a power stronger than all the powers of the world which is able to fulfill the purpose of its care for man." - Romano Guardini
"A sense of purpose and fulfillment is the single strongest issue flowing out of the quest for meaning… The end of the quest for meaning is the beginning of the journey of faith. Indeed, nothing better illuminates the entire journey of life and faith, and in particular the special challenge of finishing them well, than the issue of purpose." - Os Guiness
"Our passion is to know we’re fulfilling the purpose for which we’re here on earth. We all desire to make a difference. We long to leave a legacy. We yearn, as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “to leave the world a bit better.”" - Os Guiness
"Too much to live with, too little to live for… In our own day this question of life purpose is more urgent than ever. Three factors have converged to fuel a search for significance without precedent in human history. First, the search for the purpose of life is one of the deepest issues of our experiences as human beings. Second, the expectation that we can all live purposeful lives has been given a gigantic boost by modern society’s offer of the maximum opportunity for choice and change in all we do. Third, our fulfillment is thwarted by this stunning fact: Out of more than a score of great civilizations in human history, modern Western civilization is the very first to have a no agreed-on answer to the question of the purpose of life… Most of us in the midst of material plenty, have spiritual poverty." - Os Guiness
"Creation is imbued with purpose." - Allan J Hamilton
"The very fact that one can conceive [a]… possible solution may save one from being in the pessimistic position of imagining that there can be no possible purpose in the process at all. Such a defeatist loss of all sense of meaning… is one of the tragic outcomes of the materialism of today." - Alister Hardy, fully Sir Alister Clavering Hardy
"The poet’s language is constructed not for the purpose of being understood but to be heard; it is an intermediary language between music and words, yet close to music than to words." - Ahmet Haşim
"In Reality, nothing requires explanation. Nothing is caused by anything else. Existence requires no explanation nor does it have any dependence on any other state or quality. This understanding is clarified by the realization that nothing in and of itself has any `meaning’. Therefore, neither does it have `purpose’. Everything is already complete and merely self-existent as its own self-identity." - David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
"The human world represents a purgatorial-like range of opportunities and choices, from the most grim to the exalted, from criminality to nobility, from fear to courage, from despair to hope, and from greed to charity. This if the purpose of the human experience is to evolve, then this world is perfect just as it is." - David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
"The mind searches for meaning and is therefore circuitous in that it can reach only its own definitions of meaning. In Reality, nothing has any meaning for it has no attributers to be discerned. Everything merely exists as it was created – complete and perfect. Everything fulfills its purpose by merely being what it is. Everything is the fulfillment of its own essence and potentiality. The only `requirement’ for anything that exists is just to `be’." - David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
"The “societal purpose” of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state. The media serve this purpose in many ways: through selection of topics, distribution of concerns, framing of issues, filtering of information, emphasis and tone, and by keeping debate within the bounds of acceptable premises." - Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
"Neither existing nor evolving is a purpose – these are simply states of affairs. Demonstrating a trend toward complexity does not demonstrate purpose – it demonstrates only what happens when something new is added to something old. Nor does the ability to learn then apply what has been learned prove that life has a purpose." - David Hockey
"Purpose directs decision making. Our willingness to accept direction in almost all walks of life suggest that many, if not most, may actually prefer to be told what to think, how to behave, and what to buy. Being told, I suppose, simplifies life." - David Hockey
"Purpose directs decision making. We look for leaders with vision, people who can imagine possible futures, describe desirable ideals, then tell us how they might be achieved. Our willingness to accept direction in almost all walks of life suggest that many, if not most, may actually prefer to be told what to think, how to behave, and what to buy. Being told simplifies life." - David Hockey