Quotes on Function

I think the large part of the function of the Internet is it is archival. It's unreliable to the extent that word on the street is unreliable. It's no more unreliable than that. You can find the truth on the street if you work at it. I don't think of the Internet or the virtual as being inherently inferior to the so-called real.

If on the other hand he went to pay his respects to The Door and it wasn't there . . . what then? The answer, of course, was very simple. He had a whole board of circuits for dealing with exactly this problem, in fact this was the very heart of his function. He would continue to believe in it whatever the facts turned out to be, what else was the meaning of Belief? The Door would still be there, even if the Door was not.

The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into culture, dead matter into the living symbols of art, biological reproduction into social creativity.

One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence.

The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good.

Everyone has his own conscience,_x000D_ and there should be no rules about_x000D_ how a conscience should function.

The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier is supposed to function: without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends upon it.

My vision of a 'new world order' foresees a United Nations with a revitalized peacekeeping function.

Culture is being threatened when all worldly objects and things, produced by the present or the past, are treated as mere functions for the life process of society, as though they are there only to fulfill some need, and for this functionalization it is almost irrelevant whether the needs in question are of a high or a low order.

Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The 'facts' themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.

Today the function of psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis threatens to become the tool in the manipulation of man.

I cannot refrain from saying that women must come to recognize there is some function of womanhood other than being a child-bearing machine.

Who would dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature?

The function of an ideal is not to be realized but, like that of the North_x000D_ Star, to serve as a guiding point.

I didn’t hear words that were accurate, much less prideful. For example, I never once heard the word clitoris. It would be years before I learned that females possessed the only organ in the human body with no function than to feel pleasure. (If such an organ were unique to the male body, can you imagine how much we would hear about it—and what it would be used to justify?)

We must be as familiar with the functions of our building as with our materials. We must learn what a building can be, what it should be, and also what it must not be.

There's an evolutionary imperative why we give a crap about our family and friends, and there's an evolutionary imperative why we don't give a crap about anybody else. If we loved all people indiscriminately, we couldn't function.

Don't be different just for different's sake. If you see it differently, function that way. Follow your own muse, always.

The word dysfunction has, I think, served its purpose and now has lost its meaning. Every family, like every person, is imperfect, after all. The idea that there is a family somewhere who functions, is an odd concept. In my youth I was running from my family to try to find out who I was-their influence distracted me. Now I see what a powerful hold they have, no matter what.

Opinions about obviousness are to a certain extent a function of time.

In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are capable of it.