“. . . in no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, as well as with the effect of its being made an instrument of intimidation, corruption, and delusion, for the support of depredation and oppression in the hands of governments.”
“Garion, she said very calmly, the universe knew your name before that moon up there was spun out of the emptiness. Whole constellations have been waiting for you since the beginning of time. I didn t want them to, Aunt Pol. There are those of us who aren t given that option, Garion. There are things that gave to be done and certain people who have to do them. It s as simple as that. He smiled rather sadly at her flawless face and gently touched the snowy white lock at her brow. Then, for the last time in his life, he asked the question that had been on his lips since he was a tiny boy. Why me, Aunt Pol? Why me? Can you possibly think of anyone else you d trust to deal with these matters, Garion? He had not really been prepared for that question. It came at him in stark simplicity. Now at last he fully understood. No, he sighed, I suppose not. Somehow it seems a little unfair, though. I wasn t even consulted. Neither was I, Garion, she answered. But we didn t have to be consulted, did we? The knowledge of what we have to do is born into us.”
“to cheat your way into a job bigger than your mind can handle is to become a fear-corroded ape on borrowed motions and borrowed time, and to settle down into a job that requires less than your mind’s full capacity is to cut your motor and sentence yourself to another kind of motion: decay - that your work is the process of achieving your values, and to lose your ambition for values is to lose your ambition to live - that your body is a machine, but your mind is its driver, and you must drive as far as your mind will take you, with achievement as the goal of your road - that the man who has no purpose is a machine that coasts downhill at the mercy of any boulder to crash in the first chance ditch, that the man who stifles his mind is a stalled machine slowly going to rust, that the man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap, and the man who makes another man his goal is a hitchhiker no driver should ever pick up - that your work is the purpose of your life, and you must speed past any killer who assumes the right to stop you, that any value you might find outside your work, any other loyalty or love, can be only travelers you choose to share your journey and must be travelers going on their own power in the same direction.”
“Art has always been the raft onto which we climb to save our sanity. I don t see a different purpose for it now.”
“[I]n science we have to be particularly cautious about why questions. When we ask, Why? we usually mean How? If we can answer the latter, that generally suffices for our purposes. For example, we might ask: Why is the Earth 93 million miles from the Sun? but what we really probably mean is, How is the Earth 93 million miles from the Sun? That is, we are interested in what physical processes led to the Earth ending up in its present position. Why implicitly suggests purpose, and when we try to understand the solar system in scientific terms, we do not generally ascribe purpose to it.”
“The secret of happiness: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.”
“The key is for you to discover what you love to do, what you were created to do, and then do it for the people around you with love. That is the abundant life, dear girl, no matter where in the world you live.”
“An average man is egoistic, proud and has strong self esteem. They always require partners who massage their ego not those who will drag their ego to the mud.”
“REFLECTIONS OF TRUTH Where you find Truth Is where you find your reflection And where you find your reflection Is where you find love And where you find love Is where you find light And where you find light Is where you find faith And where you find faith Is where you find purpose And where you find purpose Is where you find happiness And where you find happiness Is where you find Truth And when you find Truth Truth will set you free.”
“Give a purpose to life by solving issue in different ways.”
“To ask, How do you do it? is already starting off on the wrong foot. When reaching for the stars, there does not have to be a how if there is a big enough why .”
“Dreamers like your wife are limited, little Helldiver.” She makes sure I don’t speak. “Understand that. The only power they have is in death. The harder they die, the louder their voice, the deeper the echoes. But your wife served her purpose.”
“It was after I first began to uplift my thoughts a bit that my cravings for junk food started to dissipate. I did not connect the two at that time. First, I simply noticed that I didn’t need to sleep so much. It took a while before I realized that in addition to my improved energy level, there was a direct correlation between chewing on mental garbage and putting garbage in my mouth.”
“At the core of her senseless actions, she vaguely perceived that she yearned for something. A something that would provide her with a sure sense of fulfillment. But she could not fathom what that something might be.”
“In the end, what will you fight for-- what got there first, what got there last or what has been there all along?”
“What did he have to mope about, really? What more did he want?...Love. Purpose. Those are the things that you can t plan for. Those are the things that just happen. And what if they don t happen? Do you spend your whole life pining for them? Waiting to be happy?”
“I like trains. I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between two places, all anxieties of purpose taken care of: for this moment I know where I am going.”