Primary Purpose Quotes & Sayings

Keeping you alive,
that is my primary purpose.
I am costless,
omnipresent.
Poor oxygen,
pitiable oxygen. — Santosh Lamichhane

Your primary purpose is to be here fully, and to be total in whatever you do so that the preciousness of the present moment does not become reduced to a means to an end. And there you have your life purpose. That's the very foundation of your life. — Eckhart Tolle

For the world is - allow us the homely figure - the human being turned inside out. All that moves in the mind is symbolized in Nature. Or, to use another more philosophical, and certainly not less poetic figure, the world is a sensuous analysis of humanity, and hence an inexhaustible wardrobe for the clothing of human thought. Take any word expressive of emotion - take the word 'emotion' itself - and you will find that its primary meaning is of the outer world. In the swaying of the woods, in the unrest of the "wavy plain" the imagination saw the picture of a well-known condition of the human mind; and hence the word 'emotion'.
The man who cannot invent will never discover.
Wisdom as well as folly will serve a fool's purpose; he turns all into folly. — George MacDonald

The primary purpose of prayer is not to make requests. The primary purpose is to praise, to sing, to chant. Because the essence of prayer is a song, and man cannot live without a song.
Prayer may not save us. But prayer may make us worthy of being saved. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

A primary purpose of Judeo-Christianity has not been to move us toward a community where the teachings of someone like Jesus - simple and necessary suggestions for how to get along with eachother - are made manifest in all aspects of life, but instead provide a theological framework for a system of exploitation.[ ... ] It is more convenient for exploiter and exploited alike to pretend their parasitic relationship is Natural, ordained by God. It is easier to believe in a logic that leads directly from original sin to totalitarianism. — Derrick Jensen

[A] society which makes freedom its primary goal will lose it, because it has made, not responsibility, but freedom from responsibility, its purpose. When freedom is the basic emphasis, it is not responsible speech which is fostered but irresponsible speech. — R.J. Rushdoony

J ESUS PRIMARY MISSION IS summed Up In This One Line: "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:8). That was Jesus' assignment; it was the disciples' assignment, and it is your assignment as well. God's purpose in saving you was not simply to rescue you and keep you busy until He shipped you off to Heaven. His purpose was much bigger; He commissioned you to demonstrate the will of God, "on earth as it is in heaven," helping to transform this planet into a place that is radiant and saturated with His power and presence. This is the very backbone of the Great Commission, and it should define your life and mine. — Bill Johnson

The primary purpose of going to college isn't to get a great job. The primary purpose of college is to build a strong mind, which leads to greater self-awareness, capability, fulfillment, and service opportunities, which, incidentally, should lead to a better job. — Sean Covey

The famous axiom "Show, don't tell" is the key. Never force words into a character's mouth to tell the audience about world, history, or person. Rather, show us honest, natural scenes in which human beings talk and behave in honest, natural ways...yet at the same time indirectly pass along the necessary facts. In other words, dramatize exposition. Dramatized exposition serves two ends: Its primary purpose is to further the immediate conflict. Its secondary purpose is to convey information. The anxious novice reverses that order, putting expositional duty ahead of dramatic necessity. — Robert McKee

The primary aim, object, and purpose of consciousness is control. Consciousness in a mere automaton is a useless and unnecessary epiphenomenon. — C. Lloyd Morgan

the primary purpose of college is to become a learner. — Matthew Sanders

We must always bear in mind that the primary purpose of our work, is not to get persons to join the church or to give up their bad habits or to do anything else than this, to accept Jesus Christ, as their Saviour. — R.A. Torrey

I found the best ideas usually came, not when one was actively striving for them, but when one was in a more relaxed state ... I used to take long solitary walks on Sundays, during which I tended to review the current situation in a leisurely way. Such occasions often proved fruitful, even though (or perhaps, because) the primary purpose of the walk was relaxation and not research. — Paul Dirac

The primary purpose of meditation is to become conscious of, and familiar with, our inner life. The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life and consciousness. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The primary, the fundamental, the essential purpose of the United Nations is to keep peace. Everything it does which helps prevent World War III is good. Everything which does not further that goal, either directly or indirectly, is at best superfluous. — Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.

If loving and communing with God isn't your primary purpose in prayer, you're missing out on what Christianity is all about! — Andrew Wommack

It may be said, in broad-brush terms, that the primary purpose of life is the continuation of life. A deep program for survival and reproduction underwrites the complex cycles of life, in which death is the grand equalizer. There is, however, a peculiar novelty: human awareness of the cycle of life and a capacity to anticipate our own, individual death. — Richard J. Borden

A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of green paper. — Derrick Jensen

The ruby is meant to represent a drop of blood. It is the symbolic representation of the way of the primary edict. It means only one thing and everything. Cut. Once committed to the fight, cut. Everything else is secondary. Cut. That is your duty, your purpose, your hunger. There is no rule more important, no commitment that overrides that one. Cut. The lines are a portrayal of the dance. Cut from the void, not from bewilderment. Cut the enemy as quickly and directly as possible. Cut with certainty. Cut decisively, resolutely. Cut into his strength. Flow through the gap in his guard. Cut him. Cut him down utterly. Don't allow him a breath. Crush him. Cut him without mercy to the depths of his spirit. It's the balance of life: death. It is the dance with death. — Terry Goodkind

So, then, why is performance-based living a problem, and why do so many of us need to recover from it? Because the term performance-based living indicates that performance has become our primary measure of worth, value, or acceptance. Performance-based Christians attempt to relate to God based on performance and self-justification. Such behavior is not only nonsense, it is deadly! It is deadly because it is impossible. Therefore, either our God will justify us, or we will never be justified! But now we know that it is his determined purpose and will to be our Justifier. — Jeff Harkin

If my primary purpose here at Indiana is to go out and win ballgames, I can probably do that as well as anybody can. I would just cheat, get some money from a lot of people around Indianapolis who want to run the operation that way, and just go out and get the best basketball players I can. Then we'd beat everybody. — Bobby Knight

The film industry is a great industry with infinite possibilities for good and bad. Its primary purpose is to entertain people. On the side, it can do many other things. It can popularize certain ideals, it can make education palatable. But in the long run, the judge who decides whether what it does is good or bad is the man or woman who attends the movies. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Deep down inside, don't we at least suspect we are really made for shared relationship and not competitive acquisition? I think we do know this. But we're thrown into a modern world where identity and purpose are almost entirely based in a ruthless contest for status and stuff. Without a primary orientation of the soul toward God, life gets reduced to the pursuit of power and the acquisition of things. Attempting to yoke God to that kind of agenda is what the Bible calls idolatry - God harnessed as means, the holy reduced to utility. — Brian Zahnd

The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure. — Sydney J. Harris

We are slaves of what we don't know;of what we know we are masters.Whatever vice or weakness in ourselves we discoverand understand its cause and workings,we overcome it by the very knowing.The primary purpose of meditation is to become more consciousand familiar with our inner life.The ultimate purpose is to reach the source of life. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The primary purpose of software estimation is not to predict a project's outcome; it is to determine whether a project's targets are realistic enough to allow the project to be controlled to meet them. — Steve McConnell

Church and family are both primary influences designed by God for a purpose and when they work together, they are orange. Both are systems comprised of imperfect people - that's why God desires to use them as a platform to tell his story of restoration and redemption to the world. — Reggie Joiner

Your primary purpose is to enable consciousness to flow into what you do. The secondary purpose is whatever you want to achieve through the doing. — Eckhart Tolle

You have safety and soundness as primary purpose of the Federal Reserve, the OCC, and the other agencies which control banking regulation. — Judd Gregg

The primary purpose of life is in being in the NOW. — Eckhart Tolle

Obviously God must guide us in a way that will develop spontaneity in us. The development of character, rather than direction in this, that, and the other matter, must be the primary purpose of the Father. He will guide us, but he won't override us. That fact should make us use with caution the method of sitting down with a pencil and blank sheet of paper to write down the instructions dictated by God for the day. Suppose a parent would dictate to the child minutely everything he is to do during the day. The child would be stunted under that regime. The parent must guide in such a manner, and to the degree, that autonomous character, capable of making right decisions for itself, is produced. God does the same. — E. Stanley Jones

The primary truth that any government will be able to stand on is that God is King, not man. The Lord created this world for His purpose, and only those who are aligned with His purpose will have the authority that can stand any pressures of the times we are entering. We can build our lives on this kingdom and nothing that happens will shake us. — Rick Joyner

The primary reason Jesus came to earth was to inaugurate the Kingdom of God. Often, we hear that the reason Jesus came to the earth was to die on the Cross. Jesus did come to die on the Cross, but that death on the Cross was for the purpose of establishing the Kingdom of God. — John Eckhardt

The primary purpose of adoption is to provide a home for a child, not a child for a home. — Virginia Linder

Surely by now there can be few here who still believe the purpose of government is to protect us from the destructive activities of corporations. At last most of us must understand that the opposite is true: that the primary purpose of government is to protect those who run the economy from the outrage of injured citizens. — Derrick Jensen

Utopianism's equality is intolerant of diversity, uniqueness, debate, etc., for utopianism's purpose requires a singular focus. There can be no competing voices or causes slowing or obstructing society's long and righteous march. Utopianism relies on deceit, propaganda, dependence, intimidation, and force. In its more aggressive state, as the malignancy of the enterprise becomes more painful and its impossibility more obvious, it incites violence inasmuch as avenues for free expression and civil dissent are cut off. Violence becomes the individual's primary recourse and the state's primary response. Ultimately, the only way out is the state's termination. — Mark R. Levin

when a clear inner purpose becomes your primary goal, all your other goals have a way of working out. — Don Joseph Goewey

In the near term, such compromises made possible a continental union of North and South that provided bountiful benefits to freeborn Americans. But in the long run, the Founders' failure to put slavery on a path of ultimate extinction would lead to massive military conflict on American soil - the very sort of conflict whose avoidance was, as we shall now see, literally the primary purpose of the Constitution of 1788. — Akhil Reed Amar

The devil will suggest some activities to you to make you leave your primary goal — Sunday Adelaja

Preventing people from illegally immigrating to the United States should be the primary purpose of Customs and Border Protection. — Ted Cruz

This may be the primary purpose of dogs: to restore our sense of wonder and to help us maintain it, to make us consider that we should trust our intuition as they trust theirs and to help us realize that a thing known intuitively can be as real as anything known by material experience. — Dean Koontz

Man's primary purpose is not to be happy but to continue to live, to continue to travel - happily or unhappily - on the path of life! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

One always has to wonder anew how anyone could imagine a god, who, so overwhelmingly intelligent and powerful as to have been able to create this enormously complex world and the vast universe it floats around in, would populate it with a bunch of humans whose primary purpose consisted of bowing subserviently in worship. — Thomas Daniel Nehrer

Unemployment in the sense of distress is widely disappearing ... We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. The poor-house is vanishing from among us. We have not yet reached the goal, but given a change to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, and we shall soon with he help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation. There is no guarantee against poverty equal to a job for every man. That is the primary purpose of the economic policies we advocate — Herbert Hoover

The purpose of spiritual life is not to create some special state of mind. A state of mind is always temporary. The purpose is to work directly with the most primary elements of our body and our mind, to see the ways we get trapped by our fears, desires, and anger, to learn directly our capacity for freedom. — Jack Kornfield

I hope to see Ruby help every programmer in the world to be productive, and to enjoy programming, and to be happy. That is the primary purpose of Ruby language. — Yukihiro Matsumoto

Partly for this reason Sir Thomas Gresham had recently built the Royal Exchange, the most fabulous commercial building of its day. (Gresham is traditionally associated with Gresham's law - that bad money drives out good - which he may or may not actually have formulated.) Modeled on the Bourse in Antwerp, the Exchange contained 150 small shops, making it one of the world's first shopping malls, but its primary purpose and virtue was that for the first time it allowed City merchants - some four thousand of them - to conduct their business indoors out of the rain. We may marvel that they waited so long to escape the English weather, but there we are. — Bill Bryson

Enchantment produces a Secondary World, into which both designer and spectator can enter, to the satisfaction of their senses while they are inside; but in its purity it is artistic in desire and purpose. Magic produces, or pretends to produce, an alteration in the Primary World. It does not matter by whom it is said to be practised, fay or mortal, it remains distinct from the other two; it is not an art but a technique; its desire is power in this world, domination of things and wills. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The primary purpose of coaching young athletes is to use sport to teach them to become better people. — Bruce Brown

performance of physical postures for the primary purpose of developing the single-pointed concentration necessary for meditation. — A. Saranagati

The most necessary task of civilization is to teach people how to think. It should be the primary purpose of our public schools. The mind of a child is naturally active, it develops through exercise. Give a child plenty of exercise, for body and brain. The trouble with our way of educating is that it does not give elasticity to the mind. It casts the brain into a mold. It insists that the child must accept. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning, and it lays more stress on memory than observation. — Thomas A. Edison

A primary purpose for setting goals is to get you moving in the right direction. When you set goals, you have to keep them always in mind. — Stedman Graham

The primary purpose of a home is to reflect and to distribute the love of Christ. Anything that usurps that is idolatrous. — Ravi Zacharias

Here is life's essential purpose - to worship God in spirit and in truth (see John 4:24). All other purposes are meant to be secondary. When they become primary, they destroy the individual. — Ravi Zacharias

Barth observes that the seventh day does not come at the end of a week of toil and labor for human beings as though its primary purpose is to offer a measure of respite after days of toil. Rather, since "God's seventh day was man's first,"54 the seventh day sets life's priority for human beings in the most tangible way. Better yet - and much closer to the point - the seventh day brings to view God's priorities. Seeing that human time "begins with a day of rest and not a day of work,"55 the spiritual pursuit, living life in a relationship with the Creator that is mutually meaningful, stands out as the primary meaning in life. — Sigve K. Tonstad

Most ladies do not understand that first and primary they need to find and fulfil their life calling — Sunday Adelaja

The primary purpose of reading the Bible is not to know the Bible but to know God. — James Merritt

The primary purpose of the Museum is to help people enjoy, understand, and use the visual arts of our time. — Alfred H. Barr Jr.

The primary purpose of prayer is to bring us into such a life of communion with the Father that, by the power of the Spirit, we are increasingly conformed to the image of the Son. — Richard Foster

Children's books aren't textbooks. Their primary purpose isn't supposed to be "Pick this up and it will teach you this." It's not how literature should be. You probably do learn something from every book you pick up, but it might be simply how to laugh. — J.K. Rowling

A primary purpose of school - and this is true for our culture's science and religion as well - is to lead us away from our own experience. The process of schooling does not give birth to human beings - as education should but never will so long as it springs from the collective consciousness of our culture - but instead it teaches us to value abstract rewards at the expense of our autonomy, curiosity, interior lives, and time. This lesson is crucial to individual economic success ("I love art," my students would say, "but I've got to make a living"), to the perpetuation of our economic system (What if all those who hated their jobs quit?), and it is crucial, as should be clear now, to the rationale that causes all mass atrocities. — Derrick Jensen

Clearly, one primary purpose of our existence upon the earth is to obtain a body of flesh and bones. We have also been given the gift of agency. In a thousand ways we are privileged to choose for ourselves. Here we learn from the hard taskmaster of experience. We discern between good and evil. We differentiate as to the bitter and the sweet. We discover that there are consequences attached to our actions. — Thomas S. Monson

What is the primary purpose of a political leader? To build a majority. If voters care about parking lots, then talk about parking lots. — Newt Gingrich

It is not certain whether the effects of totalitarianism upon verse need be so deadly as its effects on prose. There is a whole series of converging reasons why it is somewhat easier for a poet than a prose writer to feel at home in an authoritarian society.[ ... ]what the poet is saying- that is, what his poem "means" if translated into prose- is relatively unimportant, even to himself. The thought contained in a poem is always simple, and is no more the primary purpose of the poem than the anecdote is the primary purpose of the picture. A poem is an arrangement of sounds and associations, as a painting is an arrangement of brushmarks. For short snatches, indeed, as in the refrain of a song, poetry can even dispense with meaning altogether. — George Orwell

A few primary keys to becoming a leader in business include having a clear intent or purpose, a truly inspiring vision, a grand message to share, a genuine social calling and a targeted niche to serve. — John Frederick Demartini

...we must be careful to avoid the error of reductionism, as if the whole of the Spirit's ministry can be reduced to Christology, as if the Spirit does nothing but glorify Christ. It's the mistake of arguing that the primary purpose of the Spirit's coming is the sole purpose of his coming. The principal aim of the Spirit in what he does is to awaken us to the glory, splendor, and centrality of the work of Christ Jesus. But this does not mean that it is less than the Spirit at work when he awakens us also to his own glory and power and abiding presence. — Sam Storms

The primary purpose of education is not to teach you to earn your bread, but to make every mouthful sweeter. — James Rowland Angell

Scientific modes of thought cannot be developed and become generally accepted unless people renounce their primary, unreflecting, and spontaneous attempt to understand all their experience in terms of its purpose and meaning for themselves. The development that led to more adequate knowledge and increasing control of nature was therefore, considered from one aspect, also a development toward greater self-control by men. — Norbert Elias

I believe that space travel will one day become as common as airline travel is today. I'm convinced, however, that the true future of space travel does not lie with government agencies
NASA is still obsessed with the idea that the primary purpose of the space program is science
but real progress will come from private companies competing to provide the ultimate adventure ride, and NASA will receive the trickle-down benefits. — Buzz Aldrin

A man's primary duty in life is to earn his own living, but to what purpose if he did not have a wife and children? — Mario Puzo

We should never lose sight of the underlying essence of a market-a place where buyers and sellers come together. Every other feature-whether crafted by tradition or technology-exists only to serve that primary purpose. — Arthur Levitt Jr

Whenever you
become anxious or stressed, outer purpose has taken over, and you lost sight
of your inner purpose. You have forgotten that your state of consciousness is
primary, all else secondary. — Eckhart Tolle

The Founding Fathers did not believe the primary purpose of their guns was to hunt ducks, but to keep the government in line within the bounds of the Constitution. The Founding Fathers said that armed citizens are a bulwark against a tyrant in the White House. — John Coleman

In more than 20 years I've spent studying the issue, I have yet to hear a convincing argument that college football has anything do with what is presumably the primary purpose of higher education: academics. — H. G. Bissinger

Terrorism is an act of violence whose primary purpose is to create fear and, through that, a political result. — George Friedman

God's fundamental goal for believers is not to protect us from harm or suffering, to make us comfortable, or to benefit from our service. You can biblically sum up God's primary aim for your whole life in one uncomfortable word: change. Ironic as it may sound, change is the one constant that God purposes for every believer, regardless of circumstances - whether you are in ministry or in a secular job, married or single, healthy or handicapped, chronically ill or terminally diseased. God's immediate and ongoing purpose for every Christian in time and on earth is to change us, to make us like Himself, to conform us to the image of His Son. — Layton Talbert

I think that intelligent forecasting (company revenues, earnings, etc.) should not seek to predict what will in fact happen in the future. Its purpose ought to be to illuminate the road, to point out obstacles and potential pitfalls and so assist management to tailor events and to bend them in a desired direction. Forecasting should be used as a device to put both problems and opportunities into perspective. It is a management tool, but it can never be a substitute for strategy, nor should it ever be used as the primary basis for portfolio investment decisions. — Peter Cundill

A lot of arguments happen among religious and non religious people about the question of who's going to hell and who's going to heaven and uh, a lot of times Christians get into this argument by saying 'we have the only way to heaven.' And uh, people often ask me what do I think is the way to heaven. I have a problem when they ask me this question because it assumes that the primary purpose of Jesus' coming and the primary message of Jesus was a message about how to get to heaven. — Brian D. McLaren

Music may appeal to crude and coarse feelings or to refined and noble ones; and in so far as it does the latter it awakens the higher nature and works an effect, though but a transitory effect, of a beneficial kind. But the primary purpose of music is neither instruction nor culture but pleasure; and this is an all-sufficient purpose. — Herbert Spencer

I would suggest that developing in every student the positive potential that can benefit the world has to be the primary purpose of education, rather than the effort to impart knowledge and skills. — Ilchi Lee

It is only if the primary or only reason you do what you do is to make money that you will envy every random person who made or makes a lot of money (or money that exceeds what you made or make). — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

There is no substitute for finding true purpose. But the true or primary purpose of your life cannot be found on the outer level. It does not concern what you do but what you are - that is to say, your state of consciousness. — Eckhart Tolle

Worship is a posture of life that takes as its primary purpose the understanding of what it really means to love and revere God. — Ravi Zacharias

It was when my children were 5, 3 and 10 months old that I just felt the desperate need to get to know God through the pages of my Bible. And as a result, I started a Bible class in my city for the primary purpose of being in it. — Anne Graham Lotz

The primary purpose of the Legislature in establishing "Arbor Day," was to develop and stimulate in the children of the Commonwealth a love and reverence for Nature as revealed in trees and shrubs and flowers. In the language of the statute, "to encourage the planting, protection and preservation of trees and shrubs" was believed to be the most effectual way in which to lead our children to love Nature and reverence Nature's God, and to see the uses to which these natural objects may be put in making our school grounds more healthful and at-tractive. — Andrew S. Draper

Burnout at its deepest level is not the result of some train wreck of examinations, long call shifts, or poor clinical evaluations. It is the sum total of hundreds and thousands of tiny betrayals of purpose, each one so minute that it hardly attracts notice. When a great ship steams across the ocean, even tiny ripples can accumulate over time, precipitating a dramatic shift in course. There are many Tertius Lydgates, male and female, inhabiting the lecture halls, laboratories, and clinics of today's medical schools. Like latter-day Lydgates, many of them eventually find themselves expressing amazement and disgust at how far they have veered from their primary purpose. — Richard Gunderman

Mass education was designed to turn independent farmers into docile, passive tools of production. That was its primary purpose. And don't think people didn't know it. They knew it and they fought against it. There was a lot of resistance to mass education for exactly that reason. It was also understood by the elites. Emerson once said something about how we're educating them to keep them from our throats. If you don't educate them, what we call "education," they're going to take control - "they" being what Alexander Hamilton called the "great beast," namely the people. — Noam Chomsky

There is one primary purpose of a Christian's business: to serve God. — Larry Burkett