Nature, as we say, does nothing without some purpose; and for thepurpose of making mana political animal she has endowed him alone among the animals with the power of reasoned speech.

-Aristotle
c.330  BC  Politics, bk.1, ch.2,1253b (translated by T  A Sinclair).

And we know that all things work together for good to 120 them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

-Bible (NewTestament)
Romans 8:28.

Talk, v.t. To commit an indiscretion without temptation, from an impulse without purpose.

-Bierce, Ambrose Gwinett
  The Cynic's Word Book. Retitled  The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

L'art pour l'art, sans but, car tout but de¤  nature l'art. Mais l'art atteint au but qu'il n'a pas. Art for art's sake, with no purpose, for any purpose perverts art. But art achieves a purpose which is not its own.

-Constant (de Rebecque), (Henri) Benjamin
  Journal intime,11 Feb, quoted in the Revue Internationale, 10  Jan1887.

It is only when you get to see and realize what India isöthat she is the strength and the greatness of Englandöthat you feel that every nerve a man may strain, every energy he may put forward, cannot be devoted to a nobler purpose than keeping tight the cords that hold India to ourselves.

-Curzon (of Kedleston), Lord George Nathaniel
  Speech at Southport,15 May.

It is horrible, yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame.

-Doyle, SirArthur Conan
  Of the final moments of the1908 Olympic marathon, in which the Italian runner Dorando Pietri had to be helped over the finishing line and was thus disqualified. Quoted in Colin Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

In a mind charged with an eager purpose and an unfinished vindictiveness, there is no room for new feelings.

-Eliot, George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans
  The Mill on the Floss, bk.4, ch.3.

And what you thought you came for Is onlya shell, a husk of meaning From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled If at all. Either you had no purpose Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured And is altered in fulfilment.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  Four Quartets,'Little Gidding', pt.1.

   I have always had the greatest contempt for novels written with a purpose. Fiction should render, not draw morals. But†I sinned against my gods to the extent of saying that I was goingöto the level of the light vouchsafed meöto write a work that should have for its purpose the obviating of all future wars.

-Ford, Ford Madox originally Ford Hermann Hueffer
  On Parade's End.

The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb.We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forcedöby what? Bya system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.

-Fromm, Erich
  The Sane Society.

The purpose of art is the lifelong construction of a state of wonder.

-Gould, Glenn
Quoted by Lorraine Monk at the Commencement  Address,York University, Toronto, 6 Nov1982.

The Englishman never enjoys himself except for a noble purpose.

-Herbert, SirA(lan) P(atrick)
  Uncommon Law,'Fox-Hunting Fun'.

Let it not be said of this Atlantic generation that we left ideals and visions to the past, nor purpose and determination to our adversaries.We have come too far, we have sacrificed too much to disdain the future now.

-Kennedy,John F(itzgerald)
  Speech to the West German Parliament, Frankfurt, 25  Jun.

I look forward to†a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint; its wealth with our wisdom; its power with our purpose.

-Kennedy,John F(itzgerald)
  Last major public speech,  Amherst College, 26 Oct.

This very night I am going to leave off tobacco! Surely there must be some other world in which this unconquerable purpose shall be realized.

-Lamb, Charles
  Letter to Thomas Manning, 26 Dec. Collected in E  W Marrs (ed) Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, vol.3 (1978).

   Better passion and death than any more of these'isms'. No more of the old purpose done up in aspic. Better passion and death.

-Lawrence, D(avid) H(erbert)
  Fantasia of the Unconscious, ch.15.

We were a self-centred army without parade or gesture, devoted to freedom, the second of man's creeds, a purpose so ravenous that it devoured all our strength, a hope so transcendent that ourearlier ambitions faded in its glare.

-Arabia
  Seven Pillars of  Wisdom, ch.1.

Nostre grand et glorieux chef-d'½uvre, c'est vivre a' propos. The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose.

-Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de
  Essais, bk.3, ch.13 (translated by Charles Cotton).

   Dear husband! I take shame to myself that my purpose was less firm, that my heart lingered so far behind yours in preparing for this great epoch in our lives; that like Lot's wife, I still turned and looked back, and clung with all my strength to the land I was leaving. It was not the hardships of an emigrant's life I dreaded. I could bear mere physical privations philosophically enough; it was the loss of society in which I had moved, the want of congenial minds, of persons engaged in congenial pursuits, that made me so reluctant to respond to my husband's call.

-Moodie, Susanna ne¤  e Strickland
  Roughing It in the Bush; or,  A Life in Canada, vol.1, ch.11, 'The Charivari'.

The life-efficiency and adaptability of the computer must be questioned. Its judicious use depends upon the availability of its human employers quite literally to keep their own heads, not merely to scrutinize the programming but to reserve for themselves the right of ultimate decision. No automatic system can be intelligently run byautomatonsöor by people who dare not assert human intuition, human autonomy, human purpose.

-Mumford, Lewis
  The Myth of the Machine.