Best Aims Quotes & Sayings

The problem with so much religious communication is that it aims at changing our minds. The result is that we can hear the message of the preacher without necessarily heeding the message; we can listen to the "truth" and agree with it, yet not change in response to it. — Peter Rollins

By validating and aggregating the best material from a wide range of independent and mainstream content owners, Babelgum aims to encourage common interest communities that are not well served by traditional television. — Silvio Scaglia

There is no task of greater importance than to give our children the very best preparation for the demands of an ominous future, a preparation which aims at the methodical cultivation of their spiritual and their moral gifts. As long as the exemplary work of the Waldorf School Movement continues to spread its influence as it has done over the past decades, we can all look forward with hope. I am sure that Rudolf Steiner's work for children must be considered a central contribution to the twentieth century and I feel it deserves the support of all freedom-loving thinking people. — Bruno Walter

Schools are not intended to moralize a wicked world, but to impart knowledge and develop intelligence, with only two social aims in mind: prepare to take on one's share in the world's work, and perhaps in addition, lend a hand in improving society, after schooling is done. — Jacques Barzun

We have to stop pretending that Islam is a religion. Islam is a totalitarian ideology that aims to conquer the West. — Edward Cline

It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. — Emma Goldman

Elizabeth's whole style of rule was pragmatic and free from preconceptions. It was not that she had no strategic aims, but they were broad and simple. God had entrusted her with three things: a realm to defend; a church to lead in the true way; and a people to protect, both against foreign enemies and against themselves. — David Loades

Terrorism benefits the Arabs, it may lay waste the Yishuv and shake Zionism. But to follow in the Arabs' footsteps and ape their deeds is to be blind to the gulf between us. Our aims and theirs run counter: methods calculated to further theirs, are ruinous to us. — David Ben-Gurion

It is one of the aims of linguistics to define itself, to recognise what belongs within its domain. In those cases where it relies upon psychology, it will do so indirectly, remaining independent. — Ferdinand De Saussure

The customer is an object to be manipulated, not a concrete person whose aims the businessman is interested to satisfy. — Erich Fromm

I am an adherent of the ideal of democracy, although I well know the weaknesses of the democratic form of government. Social equality and economic protection of the individual appeared to me always as the important communal aims of the state. Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated. — Albert Einstein

As long as art is understood and valued as an "absolute" activity, it will be a separate, elitist one. Elites presuppose masses. So far as the best art defines itself by essentially "priestly" aims, it presupposes and confirms the existence of a relatively passive, never fully initiated, voyeuristic laity which is regularly convoked to watch, listen, read, or hear - and then sent away. — Susan Sontag

Ambitious and thought-provoking, Higher Education in America represents an informed and informative addition to ongoing debates at the national, state, and institutional levels about the aims higher education ought to aspire to and how best to achieve them. — David M. Brown

A university is not a service station. Neither is it a political society, nor a meeting place for political societies. With all its limitations and failures, and they are invariably many, it is the best and most benign side of our society insofar as that society aims to cherish the human mind. — Richard Hofstadter

Auguste Comte, in particular, whose social system, as unfolded in his Systeme de Politique Positive, aims at establishing (though by moral more than by legal appliances) a despotism of society over the individual, surpassing anything contemplated in the political ideal of the most rigid disciplinarian among the ancient philosophers. — John Stuart Mill

ABREAST
He who aims
to keep abreast
is for ever
second best. — Piet Hein

The National Socialist Movement, which aims at establishing the National Socialist People's State, must always bear steadfastly in mind the principle that every future institution under that State must be rooted in the movement itself. — Adolf Hitler

Statesmen think in terms of history and view society as an organism. Prophets are different since they believe absolute aims can be achieved in the foreseeable future. More people have been killed by crusaders than by statesmen. — Henry A. Kissinger

After all, C++ isn't a perfect match for Java's design aims either. — Bjarne Stroustrup

The first question here, then, is not "What is best for my soul?" nor is it even "What is most useful to humanity?" But-transcending both these limited aims-what function must this life fulfill in the great and secret economy of God? — Evelyn Underhill

Every art, and every science reduced to a teachable form, and in like manner every action and moral choice, aims, it is thought, at some good: for which reason a common and by no means a bad description of the Chief Good is, that which all things aim at. — Aristotle.

Let me enjoy the earth no less because the all-enacting light that fashioned forth its loveliness had other aims than my delight. — Thomas Hardy

While versioning sets different prices for different versions of one product in order to approximate the optimal revenue rates of personal pricing, bundling aims to achieve that by offering several products in one package. Therefore, the customers may choose whether to acquire products separately or in a bundle. This approach is particularly useful, when it is assumed that the customers have heterogenous willingness to pay for each product. — Christof Weinhardt

For any exam in history, here is the answer: all human history is the struggle between systems that attempt to shackle the human personality in the name of some intangible good on the one hand and systems that enable and expand the scope of human personality in the pursuit of extremely tangible aims. The American system is the most successful in the world because it harmonizes best with the aims and longings of human personality while allowing the best protection to other personalities. — Ben Stein

The writer who aims at producing the platitudes which are "not for an age, but for all time" has his reward in being unreadable inall ages ... The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only sort of man who writes about all people and about all time. — George Bernard Shaw

When states are democratically governed according to law, there are no demagogues, and the best citizens are securely in the saddle; but where the laws are not sovereign, there you find demagogues. The people become a monarch ... such people, in its role as a monarch, not being controlled by law, aims at sole power and becomes like a master. — Aristotle.

Whoever invented marriage was an ingenious tormentor. It is an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings. The whole point of marriage is repetition. The best it aims for is the creation of strong, mutual dependencies. — Susan Sontag

Among its many uses, dance/movement therapy aims to help people overcome trauma, often by nonverbally bringing the elements of the experience to the fore. — Judith Lynne Hanna

Conservatism aims to maintain in working order the loyalties of the community to perceived truths and also to those truths which in their judgment have earned universal recognition. — William F. Buckley Jr.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. — George Orwell

Success is the accomplishment of any number of possible aims, dreams, aspirations or goals. It's very personal and unique to you. Your greatest desire could be someone else's idea of hell; you might want to be an award-winning chef while your best friend hates cooking. — Nigel Cumberland

The plot details of B movies are irrational: accept that people do things that are contradictory, against their own best interests, have short term aims & limited attention span, and do incredibly stupid things while things blow up. Apart from things blowing up, this is just like the music industry. — Robert Fripp

Beauty being the best of all we know sums up the unsearchable and secret aims of nature. — Robert Bridges

It is quite possible that, even if you set the most relevant, realistic goals, you may not achieve them in the way or the time you wanted to. Life may throw something unexpected in your path, which stops you from achieving what you want, when you want. This is not failure. Feeling like you have failed is bound to lead to low mood, and can often come about if things haven't quite gone according to plan. However, the best thing to do is to draw a mental line under the experience, learn from what has happened and try again. As long as you are still trying, you are working towards your long-term aims; and as long as you are doing that, you are never truly failing. — Anna Barnes

The team's aims are do to the best we can basically. — David Leslie

At its best, management theory is part of the democratic promise of America. It aims to replace the despotism of the old bosses with the rule of scientific law. It offers economic power to all who have the talent and energy to attain it. — Matthew Stewart

It wasn't that I amassed it with aims of selling it and becoming a rich man. My personality demanded that I be surrounded by the best examples of the world's art. — Hermann Goring

The aims of life are the best defense against death. — Primo Levi

Acknowledging, as a fact, the equal rights of all its members to the treasures accumulated in the past, it no longer recognizes a division between exploited and exploiters, governed and governors, dominated and dominators, and it seeks to establish a certain harmonious compatibility in its midst-not by subjecting all its members to an -authority that is fictitiously supposed to represent society, not by trying to establish uniformity, but by urging all men to develop free initiative, free action, free association. It seeks the most complete development of individuality combined with the highest development of voluntary association in all its aspects, in all possible degrees, for all imaginable aims; ever changing, ever modified associations which carry in themselves the elements of their durability and constantly assume new forms, which answer best to the multiple aspirations of all. — Pyotr Kropotkin

Yet it ought to be clear that a minimum wage law is, at best, a limited weapon for combatting the evil of low wages, and that the possible good to be achieved by such a law can exceed the possible harm only in proportion as its aims are modest. The more ambitious such a law is, the larger the number of workers it attempts to cover, and the more it attempts to raise their wages, the more likely are its harmful effects to exceed its good effects. — Henry Hazlitt

In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall succeed in our aims: the improvement of mankind. — Rosalind Franklin

The built environment is shaped not only by private sector development pratices, but also by the honored and fascinating field of planning. Planners in towns, counties, regional and state government, consulting firms and in economic development agencies translate ideas about human settlements into concrete designs. They can be generalists or specialize in transportation, urban centers, rural land use, economic development and more. At its best, the planning profession aims to mediate tensions between people, social groups, and the natural environment by creating an orderly process for determining common values, shared priorities and elegant principles for transcending conflicts. Therefore planners may find themselves caught in some of the most challenging political crossfire to be found. But they also have the opportunity to educate many sectors and communities. — Melissa Everett

I am delighted to invest in JetSynthesys and join the Board as Non-Executive Chairman. JetSynthesys aims to become the platform of choice for digital content and experience. We have invested extensively in backend technology infrastructure that is best in class in the world. — Kris Gopalakrishnan

For a patrimonial state to be stable over time, it is best ruled with consent, at least with consent from the largest minority, if not from the majority. Instinctive obedience must be the norm, otherwise too much effort needs to be put into suppressing disaffection for the regime's wider aims to be achievable. Consent is, however, not always easy to obtain. The collective view of most societies is rather conservative: in the main people prefer to see the social arrangements of their youth perpetuated into their old age; they prefer that things be done in the time-honoured way; they are suspicious of novelty and resistant to change. Thus when radical action must be taken, for whatever reason, a great burden falls on the ruler, the father-figure, who has to overcome this social inertia and persuade his subjects to follow his lead. In order that his will shall prevail, he needs to generate huge respect, preferably adulation, and if at all possible sheer awe among his people. — Paul Kriwaczek

Look closely into his aims, observe the means by which he pursues them, discover what brings him content - and can the man's real worth remain hidden from you? — Confucius

The scientist is a practical man and his are practical (i.e., practically attainable) aims. He does not seek the ultimate but the proximate. He does not speak of the last analysis but rather of the next approximation. His are not those beautiful structures so delicately designed that a single flaw may cause the collapse of the whole. The scientist builds slowly and with a gross but solid kind of masonry. If dissatisfied with any of his work, even if it be near the very foundations, he can replace that part without damage to the remainder. — Gilbert N. Lewis

The theory of the method of knowing which is advanced in these pages may be termed pragmatic ... Only that which has been organized into our disposition so as to enable us to adapt the environment to our needs and adapt our aims and desires to the situation in which we live is really knowledge. — John Dewey

Unsettling signs of al Qaeda's aims and skills in cyberspace have led some government experts to conclude that terrorists are at the threshold of using the Internet as a direct instrument of bloodshed. — Barton Gellman

This means that the search for a formula of European cooperation in connection with the League of Nations, far from weakening the authority of this latter must and can only tend to strengthen it, for it is closely connected with its aims. — Aristide Briand

The painters have no copyright on modern art! ... I believe in, and make no apologies for, photography: it is the most important graphic medium of our day. It does not have to be, indeed cannot be - compared to painting - it has different means and aims. — Edward Weston

Take away religion, take away philosophy, take away the higher aims of art, and you deprive ordinary people of the ways in which they can represent their apartness. Human nature, once something to live up to, becomes something to live down to instead. Biological reductionism nurtures this 'living down', which is why people so readily fall for it. It makes cynicism respectable and degeneracy chic. It abolishes our kind, and with it our kindness. — Roger Scruton

The love of popularity seems little else than the love of being beloved; and is only blamable when a person aims at the affections of a people by means in appearance honest, but in their end pernicious and destructive. — William Shenstone

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They open declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE! — Karl Marx

I make a distinction between Buddhism with a Capital 'B' and buddhism with a small 'b'. Sri Lanka has the former, in which the state uses Buddhism as an instrument of power, so there are even Buddhists monks who say the Tamils should be eliminated. Thai Buddhists are not perfect either. Some Thai Buddhist monks have compromised with the kind and possess cars and other luxuries. In many Buddhist countries, the emphasis is on being goody-goody, which is not good enough. I am for buddhism with a small 'b' which is non-violent, practical and aims to eliminate the cause of suffering.. — Sulak Sivaraksa

Yoga aims to remove the root cause of all diseases, not to treat its symptoms as medical science generally attempts to do. — Vishnudevananda Saraswati

We see now why the great target of Satan is to break down our faith. He knows all too well that the righteous live by faith, so he aims at cutting our lifeline to God. Faith is like the hand that reaches up to receive what God has freely promised. If the devil can pull your hand back down to your side, then he has succeeded. All of God's intended supply will just stay where it is in heaven. — Jim Cymbala

A civilization without insanity, without criminals and without war, where the able can prosper and honest beings can have rights, and where man is free to rise to greater heights, are the aims of Scientology. — L. Ron Hubbard

An ignorance of means may minister to greatness, but an ignorance of aims make it impossible to be great at all. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I'm not the kind of director who aims to send a message out. — Park Chan-wook

The more woman aims for personal identity and autonomy ... the fiercer will be her struggle with nature - that is, with the intractable physical laws of her own body. And the more nature will punish her: 'Do not dare to be free! For your body does not belong to you.' — Camille Paglia

Inspiration is incompatible with selfish desire. Whoever wants something for himself sets truth aside. Such aims can only degrade work. — Antonin Sertillanges

Books took, in her young life, the place of companions and childish games. She read a great deal without guidance or discrimination, and gained all her ideas on life, all her faith, all her ideals and aims and aspirations from books. Books stood between her and reality, and hid from her those deep truths that can never be learnt from even the greatest literary production, but can only be understood after long years of untiring observation and experience. It was in books also that Irene found her ideal of the man she could love. Her hero was an exceedingly complicated character. — Aimee Dostoyevsky

Sometimes, you don't get what you want the most ... At other times, you're just lucky. — Sanhita Baruah

Etatism by no means aims at the formal transformation of all ownership of the means of production into State ownership by a complete overthrow of the established legal system. Only the biggest industrial, mining, and transport enterprises are to be nationalized; in agriculture, and in medium- and small-scale industry, private property is nominally to continue. Nevertheless, all enterprises are to become State undertakings in fact. Owners are to be left the title and dignity of ownership, it is true, and to be given a right to the receipt of a 'reasonable' income, 'in accordance with their position'; but, in fact, every business is to be changed into a government office and every livelihood into an official profession. — Ludwig Von Mises

Hindsight has taught me that there is a ravenous, invisible twin haunting each of us. Despite "good works" and selfless sacrifice for noble causes, without unremitting vigilance, even tiny indulgences will betray high aims and deflect nourishment to this parasitic companion. Unfortunately, not even hindsight frees us from the consequences of such indulgence. Emmett — Peter Coyote

The one, more Latin, more Roman, closer to eloquence than to the literal word, aims at a certain effect, at magic. The other, more Greek, more Hellenistic, seeks transparency flowing from the source. — Therese De Lisieux

It is no accident that Sufis find that they can connect most constructively with people who are well integrated into the world, as well as having higher aims, and that those who adopt a sensible attitude towards society and life as generally known can usually absorb Sufi teachings very well indeed — Idries Shah

Moral virtue is a mean ... between two vices, one of excess and the other of defect; ... it is such a mean because it aims at hitting the middle point in feelings and in actions. This is why it is a hard task to be good, for it is hard to find the middle point in anything. — Aristotle.

Zen aims at freedom but its practice is disciplined. — Gary Snyder

Fundamentally the marksman aims at himself. — D.T. Suzuki

Classical Sanskrit prose writers made very long sentences like this: "Lost in the forest and in thought, bent upon death and at the root of a tree, fallen upon calamity and her nurse's bosom, parted from her husband and happiness, burnt with the fierce sunshine and the woes of widowhood, her mouth closed with silence as well as by her hand, held fast by her companions as well as by grief, I saw her with her kindred and her graces all gone, her ears and her soul left bare, her ornaments and her aims abandoned, her bracelets and her hopes broken, her companions and the needle-like grass-spears clinging round her feet, her eyes and her beloved fixed within her bosom, her sighs and her hair long, her limbs and her merits exhausted, her aged attendants and her streams of tears falling down at her feet...." and it goes on. — Abraham Eraly

But what must be the character of that policy, which aims at national prosperity through the impoverishment of a large proportion of the home producers, with a view to supply foreigners at a cheaper rate, and give them all the benifet of the national privation and self denial? — Jean-Baptiste Say

The attainment of the economic aims of man presupposes peace. — Ludwig Von Mises

I am no scientist. I explore the neighborhood. An infant who has just learned to hold up his head has a frank and forthright way of gazing about him in bewilderment. He hasn't the faintest clue where he is, and he aims to find out. In a couple of years, what he will have learned instead is how to fake it: he'll have the cocksure air of a squatter who has come to feel he owns the place. Some unwonted, taught pride diverts us from our original intent, which is to explore the neighborhood, view the landscape, to discover at least where it is that we have been so startlingly set down, if we can't learn why. — Annie Dillard

On the sled, in the box, lay a third man whose toil was over, - a man whom the Wild had conquered and beaten down until he would never move nor struggle again. It is not the way of the Wild to like movement. Life is an offense to it, for life is movement; and the Wild aims always to destroy movement. — Jack London

Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him from all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him. — Emile Durkheim

But no matte what kind of an understanding is adopted, whether associated with positivism, which asserts that the truth can only be reached by trial and error, or rationalism, which asserts that everything can be explained and grasped by reason, whether the perspective of romanticism, which overemphasizes imagination and sensitivity, or an approach based on ardent naturalism, whether based on realism, which aims to describe everything as it is including its shortcomings, or a curiosity-raising approach such as surrealism, whether idealism, which asserts that there is nothing real but ideas, or cubism, which asserts that there is nothing real but instead of direct description, or some other such current or perspective, that is not true poetry. — M. Fethullah Gulen

Missionaries, whether of philosophy or religion, rarely make rapid way, unless their preachings fall in with the prepossessions ofthe multitude of shallow thinkers, or can be made to serve as a stalking-horse for the promotion of the practical aims of the still larger multitude, who do not profess to think much, but are quite certain they want a great deal. — Thomas Huxley