One friend in a lifetime ismuch; two are many; three are hardly possible.Friendship needs a certainparallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

-Adams, Henry Brooks
  The Education of Henry  Adams, ch.20.

Evil people†you never forget them. And that's the aim of any actressönever to be forgotten.

-Davis, Bette originally Ruth Elizabeth Davis
  On her favourite character roles. In the NewYork State Theater programme,  Jun.

What's the aim of the school of business, for example? They teach students how business is conducted today and how to perpetuate it. Any wonder we're in trouble? They ought to be preparing students for the future, not for the past.

-Deming,W(illiam) Edwards
  Interview in the Wall Street  Journal, 4  Jun.

Pour ce qu'alors je de¤  sirais vaquer seulement a'   la recherche de la ve¤  rite¤ ,  je pensai qu'il fallait que je†rejetasse comme absolument faux tout ce en quoi je pourrais imaginer le moindre doute, afin de voir s'il ne resterait point, apre'  s cela, quelque chose en ma cre¤  ance qui f u" t entie'  rement indubitable. Sincemy present aimwastogivemyself up tothepursuit of truth alone, I thought I must†reject as if absolutely false anything as to which I could imagine the least doubt, in order to see if I should not be left at the end believing something that was absolutely indubitable.

-Descartes, Rene¤
  Discours de la me¤  thode (Discourse on Method), 4th discourse (translated by G E M  Anscombe and Peter Geach).

The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.

-Einstein, Albert
  Quoted in Life Magazine, 9  Jan.

The British Labour movement is today, and for many years has been, working in a narrow circle of strikes that are looked upon, not as an expedient, and not as a means of propaganda, but as an ultimate aim.

-Engels, Friedrich
  Letter to Eduard Bernstein,17  Jul.

The aimof everyartist istoarrest motion, which islife, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.

-Faulkner,William Harrison
  Interview in Paris Review, Spring.

The aim of science is always to reduce complexity to simplicity.

-James,William
  The Principles of Psychology, ch.9.

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dreamöand not make dreams your master; If you can thinköand not make thoughts your aim, If you can meet withTriumph and Disaster And treat those two imposters just the same.

-Kipling, (Joseph) Rudyard
  Rewards and Fairies,'Ifö'.

Oh Happiness! our being's end and aim! Good, pleasure, ease, content! whate'er thy name: That something still which prompts th'eternal sigh, For which we bear to live, or dare to die.

-Pope, Alexander
  An Essay on Man, epistle 4, l.1^4.

Was ist dein Ziel in der Philosophie?ö'Der Fliege den Ausweg aus dem Fliegenglas zeigen'. What is your aim in philosophy?öTo show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.

-Wittgenstein, LudwigJosef Johann
  Philosophische Untersuchungen (Philosophical Investigations), section 309 (translated by G E M Anscombe).

You can't climb up to the second floor without a ladder. When you set your aim too high and don't fulfil it, then your enthusiasm turns to bitterness. Try for a goal that's reasonable, and then gradually raise it. That's the only way to get to the top.

-Zatopek, Emil
Quoted in ColinJarmanThe Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).